1iIEYFOUGHT Wl7H WHAT1iIEY Hso

1iIEY FOUGHT Wl1H WHAT1iIEY HAn

Walter D. Edmonds

for Air Force

History

First Edition: Little, Brown and Company • Boston 1951

1992

Washington.

D.C.

The Story of the Army Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific, 1941-1942
Introduction by

General George C. Kenney, USAF

Map sketches by the Author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edmonds, Walter Dumaux, 1903They fought with what they had: the story of the Army Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific, 1941-1942 / Walter D. Edmonds. p. cm. Originally published: Boston: Little, Brown, 1951 1. United States. Army Air Forces-History-World War, 1939-1945. 2. World War, 1939-1945-Aerial operations, American. 3. World War, 1939-l945-Campaigns, Pacific Area. I. Title. D790.E3 1992 940.54'4973-dc20 92-38619

Copyright 1951 by Air Force Aid Society Reprinted with permission. The Center for Air Force History acknowledges, with special appreciation, General John Shaud, Colonel Tom Scanlon, and Deneen Casper of the Air Force Aid Society, whose efforts made this World War II commemorative reprint possible.

Foreword
This book is the story of the u.s. Army Air Forces in the Philippines and Java in the last days of 1941 and 1942. It is the story of defeat during the early months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Unable to replace the loss of planes suffered in the Japanese attack, the AAF fought on "with what they had" in the Philippines and the Dutch Indies, subsequently becoming part of the AmericanBritish-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) under British General Sir Archibald P. Wavell, with AAF Major General George H. Brett. Relying on interviews and diaries, Edmonds reconstructs a holding actiongaining time-as the badly outmanned and outgunned AAF modified planes and made innovations in fighter and bomber tactics that subsequently became standard practice in the Southwest Pacific. As Edmonds notes, the accomplishments of this small band of men probably prevented the Japanese from attempting to isolate Australia before the Allies were prepared to stop them. Thus, in the end this is the story of heroism, even in defeat, and of airmen who should not be forgotten.

RICHARD P. HALLION Air Force Historian

Introduction
THIS IS a superbly written story of a shoestring war in all its grim and heartbreaking aspects-a story of the War in the Pacific during December 1941 and the early months of 1942 that has up to now been neglected. We have fought wars of this kind since 1775, but it is hard to find a time or place in our history when we were less prepared to withstand an attack than we were to counter the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in the closing days of 1941. A well-planned and skillfully executed surprise air assault on the morning of December 7th had wrecked our Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and stunned the nation with its revelation that the only barrier to the Japanese conquest of the Far East had been removed. That same day, December 8th Far Eastern Time, bombs rained down on Manila, Hongkong and Singapore, and during the next five months an empire that the white man had held for four centuries was taken over by the Nipponese who boasted that they would organize at: Greater East Asia into a "co-prosperity sphere." In the midst of all the confusion at home and in the Pacific, the heroic defense of the Philippines stood Jut like a beacon of hope for the future. There we proved that the Japanese soldier was far from invincible. Although his vastly superior forces finally took over the islands, the American and Philippine forces under MacArthur exacted a terrible toll, during their stubborn defense of Bataan and Corregidor, before our halfstarved, malaria-ridden garrison was finally forced to capitulate on May 6,1942• This story deals primarily with the air operations during those early months of Allied disaster, which have been a source of bitter controversy ever since our small Philippine Air Force was caught on the ground and practically destroyed on the opening day of the war. Various air and

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INTRODUCTION

ground generals and staff officers have been singled out in an attempt to place the blame. The author has not joined the list of critics. He has presented the facts and backed them up by one of the best research jobs I have ever seen. There was confusion in Manila on that first day of our entry into W orId War II and for several days afterward. Hawaii had its share of confusion too and so did the West Coast and Washington, D. C. It was an understandable reaction by a nation that suddenly realized that it was in a war for which it was woefully unprepared. All hope of saving the Philippines had vanished. With our Pacific Fleet out of action, we could not send troops to reinforce MacArthur. As a matter of fact we did not have the troops available to send. We did not have the aircraft to replace the losses in the Philippines. Back in the United States we did not have a single fighter or bomber squadron up to full strength in airplanes. In the Philippines, with the handful of planes remaining, the story becomes one of individual exploits, of gallant sorties against overwhelming odds, of improvisation, of insufficient means, of heroism above and beyond all normal calls of duty. The names of Wagner, Mahony, Marrett, Dyess and Sprague among the fighter pilots, and of Combs, Wheless, O'Donnell, Pease and Kelly, bomber commanders, flash through this saga of brilliant personal heroism. Captain Jesus Villamor of the little Philippine Air Force, who led his antiquated P-26s against the Japanese bombers, and the incomparable Pappy Gunn who fought two wars at the same time, one for the United States and one for himself, are other outstanding figures in a galaxy of individual stars. The responsibility for the state of unreadiness when the attack came, and for the early confusion, is so widespread that the author has wisely concluded to simply state the facts and let the reader make his own assessment; but one cannot help sympathizing with the inexperienced, insufficiently trained, individually good aviators, who had little but courage to fight with and who lost to the Japanese air force partly because of our own poor staff work. Let us hope that this story of another case of "too little, too late," will drive home a lesson to the people of this country. We must not again let our defenses down. The next time might be simply-cetoo late." GEORGE C. KENNEY General, USAF

Foreword
To The 1951 Edition

THIS ACCOUNT of the United States Air Force units that were sent out to hold the Philippines against the Japanese is not intended as military criticism. It is essentially the story of the men themselves. In a way they are also its authors. For in their interviews, written statements, and their personal, group, and squadron diaries, they have supplied the material from which this book was written. It is, of course, a story of defeat; and in defeat there is a natural human tendency to hunt for scapegoats. But to do that here would be merely to delude ourselves. The mistakes that were made at the beginning of the Philippine campaign, as well as the defeat that inevitably terminated it, were all implicit in the situation existing there immediately before the war. The poverty in modern weapons, or in more than one case the actual and abject lack of them, had its roots in the situation here at home, and for that situation the people of the United States must hold themselves accountable. The army of a democratic society like ours belongs to the people, and the people therefore have an obligation to concern themselves in its affairs. If you run a factory or a business or even a farm indefinitely as an absentee owner, the hired management is almost certain to become hidebound in its methods and dictatorial in its defense of them. It then becomes next to impossible for men with more flexible minds to make themselves heard. That is what happened in the United States Army in respect to air power between the two W orld Wars. General Billy Mitchell, who tried to take his case to the people over the heads of a reactionary command, was cashiered. The men who supported him and his beliefs within the Army were effectively bottled up. It is strange today to think of the names of a few of them: Arnold, Andrews, Doolittle, Eaker, Kenney, Knerr, Spaatz ••• We had our

FOREWORD

warning early in Roosevelt's first term, when the Air Corps was asked to carry the U. S. Mail. The resulting accidents and tragic loss of lives were not the fault of the flight crews. Those men simply lacked good airplanes, training, and the bare equipment for such flights. There was an outcry at the time but the whole matter was smothered in the Baker Report. It is not my purpose to trace here the steps by which the development of air power was stifled. It is enlightening, however, to recall that as late as 1937 the development of long-range bombardment (specifically the B-17) faced powerful opposition within the War Department itself. Not until 1939,when General Marshall became Chief of Staff, were the shackles removed from the exponents of air power and men who had suffered actual or virtual banishment recalled to service. Only then was the Army able to begin preparing itself for what, at least in the Southwest Pacific, was to be primarily an air war. But it takes time to develop combat planes, just as it takes time to train air crews, and at the end of 1939 little time was left us. When the Japanese struck, the United States Army had only 1157 planes suited for combat service. Of these 913 were based outside the United States on December 7: 61 heavy bombers, 157 medium bombers, 59 light bombers, and 636 fighter planes. But our first-line aircraft even by 1941 standards amounted to less than that. For though, in the case of the Philippines, General Arnold's Report listed a total of 316 planes/ there were actually less than 100 first-line planes fit for combat on December 7.* The situation in the Philippines was a close reflection of the situation here at home. Undeniably there were officers stationed on Luzon during the prewar years who only wanted to let things ride along in the old, familiar, easy grooves. Many of them had completely failed to digest the lessons of the war in Europe, nor were they willing to accept opinions of other men who clearly foresaw what was going to happen when the Japanese chose to strike. But it was the niggardly policy of Congress towards foreign air installations and operations (reflected undoubtedly for
• More accurate was the Memorandum to the Chief of Staff, December I, 1941, which listed 265 combat planes in the Philippines, 153 being modern types, 1I2 obsolescent. Even that was a somewhat rosy picture of the true status.

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Xl

many years in the more reactionary members of the General Staff) that lay at the root of their inertia, just as that of Congress derived from the complacent habits of self-advertisement by which we had convinced ourselves of our invincibility. Too often we were willing to elect legislators who were accustomed to bound America by the limits of their own constituencies and pinch pennies at the expense of the national safety. In the last analysis, it was such "economy" that was responsible for the pitiful and desperate lacks that reached their consummation on Bataan, and then Corregidor. The men sent out to rectify the situation in the final months had neither means nor time. The reinforcements and material rushed to them were not enough, arrived too late, or did not reach the Philippines at all. One convoy, caught at sea by the outbreak of hostilities, had to be diverted to Australia. Among other items, it carried the 52 A-24 dive bombers for the 27th Bombardment Group, which as a result, except for some 28 of its 1200officers and men, was destined to fight its air war on the ground. This meant that our effective air power in the Philippines amounted to the 35 B-17Cs and Ds of the 19th Bombardment Group, and the planes of the five combat squadrons of the newly organized 24th Pursuit Group. On the night of December 7, the 24th Pursuit Group's status report showed that each squadron had 18 planes in commission, making a total of 90 planes-54 P-4oEs, 18 P-40Bs, and 18 P-35s. But as will be seen in the course of this story, the actual strength of the Group by no means equaled its strength on paper, for one squadron was flying worn-out planes, lightly armed with badly worn guns, outdated to begin with, and overdue for an engine change. Another squadron had received its last plane from the Air Depot on the same evening; none of its planes had finished their slow-timing (a process similar to breaking in a car motor) nor had there been an opportunity to boresight and check all their guns. Only one squadron had had time to become thoroughly familiar with the characteristics of the P-40S it was flying and not one complete squadron had had real gunnery training in P-40s. In fact almost none of the junior pilots in the Group had had a chance to fire their guns at an air target till they encountered their first [ap adversary," Disregarding

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FOREWORD

the matter of training, however, the bare fact remains that the United States had only 54 first-line, combat-worthy fighter planes to throw against the Japanese on the morning of December S. There has been a good deal of confusion and some loose writing about the strength of our Air Force in the Philippines at the beginning of the war. The totals vary from 200 planes all the way to 316; 300 seems to be a favorite figure among the commentators who wish to emphasize the way the Army was "surprised" in the Philippines, so it is worth while to list briefly the remaining components of our air power. Besides the three groups already mentioned-the 27th which had no planes at all, the 19th with its 35 B-17Cs and Ds, which had no tail guns and of which 34 were in commission, and the zath with 90 combat-worthy pursuit ships listed-there was the Philippine Army Air Corps with its 6th Pursuit Squadron, and a light bomber squadron in training. The 6th Squadron was equipped with P-26s that had been turned over to the Philippine Air Corps in October when the already outdated P-35s were being replaced by P-4oEs arriving from the States. These P-26s were ready for pasture; they were so old that, as the squadron commander put it, the rivets would pop out when they ran up the engines. The light bomber squadron was doing its training in three discarded B-IOS. Then there was the znd Observation Squadron (U. S.), attached to the 24th Pursuit Group, with ten or twelve 0-46s that were augmented just before the war by a few 0-52S, a completely inadequate plane. At the end of the first two days of war, practically every plane in this squadron had been shot down. The list of miscellaneous planes included some twelve B-ISs that had been relegated to transport service and eight A-27s-dive bombers-but as six of the latter were unable to fly, only two deserve listing here. Altogether, therefore, the Army had about 176 planes in operational shape outside of basic trainers, outmoded observation planes, and oddments such as the old B-3 belonging to the Philippine Army Air Corps. Of these 176 planes not more than 135 could be classed even by the standards of 1941 as first-line aircraft, and 125 of them were combat planes. But this total was our paper strength; actually, our Army entered the

FOREWORD

Xlll

war in the Southwest Pacific with under 100 combat planes in tactical commission of a caliber to match the enemy's." It is necessary to keep that figure squarely in mind if one is to understand what happened in the Philippines. Seldom in any war has any country asked its men to stand against such odds. In the Battle of Britain, British fighter pilots were at least flying the finest pursuit ship in the world. They had a good system of airfields, good communications; they had replacements. There were no replacements for our men in the Philippines. They had no communication system worth the name; they had an inadequate air warning setup. There weren't enough airfields to permit effective dispersal of their planes. Of the fields they did have, only one possessed anything like real antiaircraft defense,t and in any case, most of the antiaircraft ammunition in the Philippines was of the obsolete powder fuse type that could not reach above 20,000 feet. They had to face shortages-in oxygen, which limited the effective ceiling of pursuit planes to 10,000 or 12,000 feet, or to the individual pilot's reaction to altitude, and in .so-caliber ammunition, which even before the war was so acute that Lieutenant Dyess's squadron were handicapped in their efforts to test and boresight the guns in their P-40S.3 These weaknesses were aggravated by similar deficiencies in the Army ground forces and the Navy, though undoubtedly these two services were more directly affected by the weakness of the Air Corps than the Air Corps was by theirs. General Wainwright has made the Army's situation at the beginning of the war abundantly clear.' As for the Navy's Asiatic Fleet, it is enough here to recall that its three cruisers were outmatched four for one by the enemy's battleships and its overage destroyers almost three for one by his cruisers," Finally the Air Corps was called upon to meet an enemy who not only
• The Navy Air Arm, except for a few small observation and utility planes, consisted of the 30 PBYs of Patrol Wing Ten, the "Patwing Ten" whose record makes one of the great stories of the war; but these planes, designed for reconnaissance and patrol, could add little to the offensive or defensive striking force in the Philippines. There were four seaplane tenders in the Asiatic Fleet-but no carrier. t The antiaircraft defense at Nichols Field, for instance, consisted of a few World War It drum-fed Lewis machine guns,

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FOREWORD

possessed an overwhelming numerical superiority in aircraft, but who had had battle experience. In the light of such odds, it is absurd to try to lay the blame for the Philippine defeat to failures in judgment of anyone or more of our commanding officers. There was no opportunity for any exercise of strategy in the air. The Japanese were able to throw a blanket of planes over Luzon. The best chance any small air force has of hurting a vastly more powerful adversary is to strike offensively out of secret bases, and, if possible, to strike first. But our Air Force was denied this chance because as a people we subscribed to principles of national honor and specifically here because the last War Department Directive received at General Headquarters ten days before the war, though warning that attack might be expected at any time, explicitly stated that if hostilities could not be avoided, the United States desired that Japan commit the first overt act." Until Japan struck, therefore, our outnumbered squadrons were limited to purely defensive operations from fields well known to the Japanese, who had been flying night reconnaissance missions over them. The Japanese had only to choose their day. The events of December 8 and the two succeeding days dictated the pattern that air war in the Southwest Pacific was to follow for the next eight months. By sunset on December 10 only about half of the B-17s were in commission, only a third of the fighter planes. The Observation Squadron was extinct and the remaining P-40S had to be carefully husbanded for reconnaissance. One thing about this opening of the war should be made clear: in the Philippines there was no surprise-in the technical sense, that is, of being caught unawares. (There were surprises over the excellence of Japanese planes and pilots that Intelligence had provided no inkling of.) The Air Force had been on full war alert since November 15. Except for the planes lost in the Japanese attack on Clark Field, the losses in both fighters and bombers were not much higher than the normal attrition rate to be expected when one's fields are under constant attack by superior forces. Of the planes lost at Clark Field, eleven were fighter planes of the zoth Pursuit Squadron, which was in the act of taking off when the Japanese hit the field. There were 17 B-17s, of which two or three were repaired after the attack. The reasons

FOREWORD

xv

for these planes being caught on the ground by the Japanese have been the source of considerable argument, even recrimination. The fact remains, however, that if they had not been caught there, it would not, in all probability, have made more than a few days' alteration in the course events were to follow on Luzon. To the men at the time and of course to some of our professional witch-hunters, this loss seemed catastrophic; but in the perspective of even ten years it becomes incidental to the general pattern of the war. After December 10, for a long time to come, the B-17s were the only real offensive weapons left in the hands of the Allied Nations, yet not till August 7 of the following year was the bomber command able to get more than ten of the big ships simultaneously over a target.* There is a legend, probably apocryphal, that General Arnold, in explaining to some men who were fighting out of Australia why they could not expect more support until United States production was able to catch up with the demands from Europe, called the war in the Southwest Pacific a "back yard war." It is a phrase that sticks in the mind, for that is very much how the war was actually fought, by a handful of men with a handful of planes and never enough replacements to let them get ahead of the game. But surely it was the biggest back yard in history. Take for example the mission flown by the roth Bombardment Group on December 22. By then they had been forced back to Australia and were operating from Batchelor Field. This mission was to be a major effort. Nine ships took off. They headed north for Davao Harbor and bombed it at sunset through an overcast, so an accurate estimate of results was impossible. That leg of the mission was 1360 miles nonstop. The planes then flew on to Del Monte on the north side of Mindanao,
• Three exceptions to this general statement should be noted. On February II, 1942, in Java, the 7th and 19th Groups between them had 15 B-17s and 4 LB-30s scheduled for a special mission to Palembang. These planes were all forced to take off for air raid precautions and the mission was then canceled. On February 12, the 7th Group contrived to get eleren planes out on a mission against the [ap fleet near Makassar, but one plane had to turn back with engine trouble. Then on February 14, the 7th and 19th Groups put fourteen planes up on a combined mission against a Jap convoy reported off Bandka Island in what was recognized at Bomber Headquarters as a maximum effort. But the convoy was not sighted and the planes were recalled to their bases and ordered to stand by for the same mission next day. On the 15th, however, only eight managed to get off,"

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FOREWORD

landing after dark on the great seamed plateau, and there in the darkness their planes were gassed and loaded with new bombs. They were supposed to go on to attack the Japanese convoy landing troops in Lingayen Gulf 800 miles farther north. But because only six ships could be serviced at once at Del Monte, only that number were ready for the 3 A.M. takeoff. One of these blew a tire, a second had to turn back. Four planes ultimately reached their Luzon objective, two together, two individually, and dropped their bombs among the 80 transports. Only two planes carried 30o-pound bombs; the others had to use roo-pounders, With Zeros rising to intercept, they turned about and headed south once more, stopping at Ambon on the way to refuel, and finally coming back to base on Batchelor Field on the afternoon of December 24. Altogether they had covered over 4300 miles to drop those few bombs with unknown Later they would fly even longer missions with fewer ships. At plish. sions many them results.

times one wonders what they accomplished or expected to accomAt times they wondered about that themselves. They flew miswhen and how they could with what they had on hand. A great of their replacements came to them utterly green, but they used anyhow. They had to. Unlike the Infantry, who were given months

to train in, arriving Air Corps personnel were likely to find themselves in combat within forty-eight hours. Bombers often carried gunners who had never fired machine guns. Some pursuit pilots went into action after only fifteen hours' training in a fighter plane. It was wasteful war. It was disorganized. It reminds one a little of the old Indian wars on our forest frontiers, for the Japanese knew how to use the weather the way the Indians used the woods. It was a matter of ambushes and long hunts. There was no Intelligence worth mentioning. After December 8, 1941, with one exception the first real Intelligence briefing the men ever had came just before the Japanese attacked Milne Bay in August 1942.* But during those black months our people were gaining experience that later paid off not only in the Southwest Pacific but, through training programs at home, in other theaters as well. They modified planes sent out to them and worked out interceptor and bombing tactics that were
• The exception was the talk General Brereton gave the officers of the 19th Group at Batehelor Field, Australia, on December 29, 1941.

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xvii

to become standard practice. And they gained time. Their accomplishment, little as it may have seemed in that enormous area of island-studded seas, was probably the deciding factor that kept the Japanese from trying to isolate Australia before we were able to prevent him. Together with the work done by the Navy's submarines and her surface ships at Makassar and in the Java Sea, they hurt the enemy and slowed his southward advance. Their long bomber missions made him dissipate his planes among scattered bases, and in their defense of Java, Australia, and New Guinea, they drew some of the sting from his air power. Few American pilots who flew through 1941 and 1942 fail to mention the deterioration in quality of the Japanese pilot. This book attempts to tell the story of what they did and how they did it. There is not a great deal of glory in it. In victory the tendency is to forget the unhappy times before we started winning, and this is largely true among military men as well as civilians. The emphasis, even in the histories, is all on how we won, not on how close we came to losing; and we read about how unbeatable our men were, how resourceful their leaders, how superb their equipment. All that is true and it is proper that Americans should find a source of lasting pride in its truth. But there is a beginning to any history, and though it is not a pretty story, the beginning of this war should be remembered. It is not meant as a "glorious chapter" in our history. Glory is mostly a civilian word and unhappily it is too often used to cover up deficiencies. In the beginning of this war we went hero-hunting-if we did not have planes and guns, at least we could have heroes. It helped to make us forget the reasons behind our lack of strength, reasons that came back to ourselves as a people too interested in our prosperity to have time to defend it. It came back to our industrial preoccupation, and to our press that had been fostering it, as well as to our government. But in the end it came back to us. So we had to have heroes and we began to think of Bataan and Corregidor in terms of the courage of our men, and the two names have become symbols in the popular mind for something approaching victory. Emotionally there is a seed of truth in that-both emotionally and strategically the two phases of the war in the Southwest Pacific, the retreat and the return, are keyed to those two names. But

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FOREWORD

actually, for the men involved, the defense was a bitter, ugly, and humiliating business. The men who took part in it will always bear the scars of that humiliation-not only the survivors of the Death March and the prisons, but the very few who managed to get out of the Philippines and tried with the pitifully little they found in the south first to fight back and then merely to delay the Japanese. For all these people, victory may palliate the humiliation but cannot wholly write it off. Perhaps a word should be said here about how the book was written. Few records were available. In those first weeks of our war men had small time for keeping records. Most of the orders seem to have passed orally. Many of the group and squadron diaries were written up, wholly or in part, after the event. And this of course applies to the men who came out of the Philippines. Those who remained had no reason to keep up and can have had small heart for the paper work of war. So to get the full story it was necessary to go to the men themselves. This book is therefore based on some 141 interviews with 169 officers and men who fought in the Philippines, the Indies, and Australia. Twenty-seven of these interviews were secured during 1944 and 1945 by two predecessors on this assignment-Mr. Lucien Hubbard and Technical Sergeant George A. McCulloch, whose preliminary work has proved of the greatest value. Forty-two interviews or written statements, including the experiences of 56 men and dating from the autumn of 1942, were drawn from Intelligence Files or the Historical Sections of various commands. The remaining 72 interviews with 86 men were secured by myself all in 1945. Thus a fairly wide coverage has been possible, not only in numbers but in time elapsed since the men had left the theater of war. It is interesting to note that the interviews taken later have proved not only more accurate but more informative. Besides these sources I have drawn, as stated above, on group and squadron diaries, on some dozen 'reports by officers, and also on a few personal diaries, and letters written to me, and on several printed books, which are listed elsewhere, and which are, primarily, recitals of personal experience. But for the most part this history rests on the spoken words and recollections of the men themselves. To rely so heavily on such a source

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XIX

may not make for definitive history in the eyes of military scholars, yet it may come as close to the truth. Newspaper accounts and communiques and military orders are not always concerned first with the people who are their lifeblood. The average reader following the war in the press would never have heard of the 5th Air Base Unit and its work on Mindanao or the 803rd Aviation Engineers. Nor would he have found in them any reference to Corporal Wiezorek, whose death will provide the closing incident of the second volume of this narrative. A short and quiet-spoken sergeant, so recently off a torpedoed prison ship that his ruptured ears still drained, took pains to be sure that I had the story straight. He was not quite sure of Wiezorek's name, though he had it near enough, because he had never seen much of him before they left O'Donnell Prison, Camp in the same work detail. But he remembered the way Wiezorek faced the Jap firing squad across the little opening in the coconut grove at Lumban, near the schoolhouse. He remembered the words Wiezorek said. Wiezorek wasn't alone. There were nine men in the line with him that day, besides the other members of the work detail brought out by the Japanese to see ten Americans destroyed. There were many others on Luzon, on the other Islands, and in the Pacific everywhere our war was being fought. It is their kind who fight wars-they mayor may not wear stars, they may but probably will not be decorated, but they will surely be called on again to die unless this country has learned at last to keep its defenses strong. We do not want to forget these men because they were defeated. -W.D.E.

Contents
Foreword Introduction by General George C. Kenney, USAF Foreword to the 1951 Edition
PART ONE

v
vii ix

The Philippines
I. FAR EAST AIR FORCE: BACKGROUND TO HISTORY I. Pacific Flight 2. The Philippine Department 3. Inventory: May and June 4. Air Forces, USAFFE 5. FEAF: October and November II. APPROACH OF WAR: REINFORCEMENT AND RECONNAISSANCE 6. Mid-November 7. Reinforcements: November 20 8. Reconnaissance: American and Japanese 9. December 7: Final Inventory III. ATTACK: DECEMBER 8
10.
II.

3
13 20 28

35

43

49

56

64
73 74 79 93 98

12. 13· 14.

Iba: The First Phase Nichols Field: 8:30 A.M. Clark and Nielson Fields: 4:00 A.M. Iba: The Second Phase Attack on Clark Field: 12:40 P.M.

TO 12:30 P.M.

XXll

CONTENTS

IV. THE EFFORT TO REORGANIZE: TWO DAYS OF WAR 15· December 9 16. December 10: Vigan 17. December 10: The rath Squadron 18. The End of Interception V. INTERLUDE: THE PHILIPPINE SCENE 19. Air Taxi 20. Bush League Air Force 21. Moonlight Parlor 22. Mission to Legaspi 23. Episode at Vigan VI. WITHDRAWAL OF FEAF: DECEMBER 24 24. The Airfield at Lubao 25. The A-24s Arrive at Last-in Australia 26. December 22: The Long Lingayen Mission 27. Departure of FEAF VII. THE RETREAT TO BATAAN 28. Fort McKinley: "Where the hell is all the Staff?" 29. Nielson Field: "Amounting to nearly a rout" 30. Clark Field: "They closed the gate and threw the key away ... " 31. Nichols Field: "All units seemed pretty much on their. own" 32. Quezon City: "They chose to stay" 33. The Bataan Road: "Trucks were really high-tailing it" 34. Christmas at Little Baguio
PART TWO

no

lI8
124 133 141
14') 147

151 160 166 172 177

188

201 206 212 216 219 231 237

Java The Opening Situation The 19th Group Moves Up 3. ABDACOM: The High Command 4. Arrival of the 17th Pursuit Squadron (Provisional)
I. 2.

247 256 265 275

CONTENTS

The Bombers Reinforcements for the 17th Pursuit A Decline in Morale The roth of February The Robenson Mission 10. Closing Missions II. Evacuation: The Ground Echelons 12. The Loss of the Langley 13. Evacuation: The Air Echelons 14. Broome: An End and a Beginning Postscript Appendix Notes List of Sources List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Index

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

List of Maps
Philippine Islands Luzon Location of U. S. Squadrons on Luzon, December 7 Pursuit Activity, December 8, 8 :00-11:00 A.M. Pursuit Activity, December 8,
11:00

15
21

69 77 98 131 157 189 249 283 295 353 405

A.M.-12:40 P.M.

Sequence of Japanese Landings on the Island of Luzon, December 1941 Legaspi Mission, December 14 Central Luzon, roads Southwest Pacific Ferry Route for Pursuit Planes, Australia to Java Java Attack on Darwin, February 19 Evacuation of Java

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THE PACIFIC
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AUSTRALIA

Mell:lour

PART

ONE

The Philippines

I Far East Air Force: Background to History

I.

Pacific Flight

a mass flight like the 19th Bombardment Group's with 26 B-I7s, from Hamilton Field just north of San Francisco to Clark Field in the Philippines, would have made one of the great news stories of the year. But by October 1941 the times had ceased to be ordinary. The shadow of Japanese aggression that for years had been gathering over the Central Pacific islands had begun to reach deep into the South China Sea. It made a pattern on the map like fingers of a hand about to close, and though in the United States citizens still hoped to see their country remain at peace, the Army was aware of the urgent need for strengthening their defenses in the Philippines, particularly in the air. But the international tension had risen to a pitch that left no time for dismantling the planes and shipping them. They had to be got out by air, and the flight was to be made under the most stringent secrecy. These 26 B-I7s, together with nine others that had preceded them from Hawaii to Luzon in September, pioneering that leg of the route,· were intended to form the main defensive weapon of our Air Force in the Southwest Pacific. It is hard now to realize that so few years ago we could look upon 35 bombers as a major striking force. Time in man's hands, like distance, has become a variable quantity. A second group of heavy bombers, the 7th, was expected to join them early in December, but that reinforcement never materialized in the
IN ORDINARY TIMES • These nine comprised mett C. O'Donndl, Jr. the 14th Bombardment Squadron, commanded by Maj. Em-

THEY FOUGHT WITH WHAT THEY HAD

Philippines and it was the 19th that for three months had to carry the burden of such air attacks as we were able to produce. A convoy with Naval escort, bearing the ground echelon of the Group, was at this time nearing Manila. Another convoy, which was to depart on the first of November, arrived only eighteen days before war started with two pursuit squadrons and the 27th Bombardment Group (light). The latter's planes, however, were to be shipped on a third convoy that left Hawaii on the morning of November 29 but, being caught at sea by the opening of hostilities, was diverted to Australia. The 19th Group was the largest single Air Force unit to reach the Philippines complete with its equipment. The flight was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Eugene L. Eubank, who had had long service with the Group and who was in large measure its creator in its present state. Assigned to him for the mission were the Headquarters Squadron and the 30th and 93rd Combat Squadrons, making a total of 234 officers and men. The remaining squadron, the 32nd, had been left behind at Albuquerque along with the 38th Reconnaissance Squadron, which had been temporarily attached to the 19th Group and one of whose crews was to rejoin it five months later at the other side of the world as a member of the 435th Reconnaissance Squadron. The men were well equipped and trained for such a flight. The 19th was one of the original heavy bomber outfits in our Air Force; for years its essential function had been the training of heavy bombardment pilots and navigators; and at this time it was the first priority group in the United States for personnel, equipment, and training facilities. The fact that it was to be sent to an outpost like the Philippines was evidence of the gravity with which the War Department regarded the international situation. Over-water flight was not a new experience for the men of the 30th and 93rd Squadrons. In May of the same year they had ferried 21 B-17S to Hawaii, remaining there for two weeks to check off pilots of the rrth Bombardment Group in the new airplanes. They had then returned to the States aboard the transport Washington, which on this voyage was evacuating families of Army and Navy personnel from the Philippines, an augury that some of the fliers may have recalled when they entered the operations room at Hamilton Field for their final briefing.

PACIFIC FLIGHT

Through the windows they could see their planes drawn up in line along the concrete parking apron. The big ships, sleek in their bright silver finish, dwarfed their crews. Their silhouette was not the same as that of the Flying Fortresses that only a little later were to become almost a symbol for war in the air. These ships lacked the sweeping dorsal fin, the upper and belly turrets, and the cylindrical extension of the fuselage through the tail assembly to provide room for the rear gunner and his guns. But they had the same air of being able to take care of themselves that has stamped every Flying Fortress Boeing ever built, whatever its series, even on the ground. The men believed their planes to be the best in the world, and in many ways their confidence proved to be justified, for airplanes have seldom stood up under such abuse as these were subjected to, nor, when as badly punished, have still brought home their crews. But there were faults in them. One, which had already been discovered, was the tendency of the skin of the ship to crack from the muzzle blast of the .50-caliber guns above the radio room, and it had been necessary to install reinforcing at the Sacramento Air Depot. Other defects would come to light under combat conditions, but basically, except for the lack of tail guns, the planes were as stanch machines as the crews believed them to be. The men themselves had little premonition of how close war lay ahead of them, in point of time if not yet of space. Their minds were occupied with thoughts of leaving home and the prospect of the long Pacific flight. In any case they had accepted a large share of the civilian myth of Japanese incompetence. While staging for the flight at Albuquerque, they had been given studies in interrogation and recognition, in the course of which they were told that Japan had only one decent airplane, called the Zero, but that very few were in production. The other Japanese planes were supposed to be definitely no good, with a top speed of about 150 miles per hour and a ceiling of only 15,000feet," As a result many of the men had the idea that war against such opposition would be a picnic, and if they had considered the possibility at all, they had not taken it with
• It is interesting to note that this belief in the low ceiling of the Japanese planes had become so ingrained that it persisted even after the first attack on Clark Field. On December 9, Lt. John Carpenter was briefed for a photographic mission to Formosa. The pictures were to be taken at 18,000 feet. If he had any trouble, Carpenter was to go to 20,000. "I'm sure nothing can reach you there," he was told.

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any seriousness. But now they received a disquieting hint of what might lie in store for them. The commanding general of the 4th Air Force, Major General Jacob E. Fickel, had come to Hamilton Field to see them off, and at the end of the briefing he spoke to the roomful of pilots and navigators for a few minutes, describing the increasing international pressures in the Pacific and telling them that they and their planes would serve as the United States's "big stick" in future negotiations with Japan. How attentively they listened it is hard to say, but his closing words must have come with sobering abruptness. "Gentlemen, I wish you straight shooting." The 30th Squadron was the first element of the flight to take off in the late evening of October 16, with nine planes. Four evenings later, at about 10:30 P.M., the others followed. They took off at intervals of a minute, but each plane flew individually. This avoided the strain of maintaining formation on a night flight of such long range and allowed the pilots to hold each plane to its maximum cruise performance. They had easy weather. The flight was entirely without incident. The big ships, droning steadily westward among the clouds, seemed in the soft night light above the sea to swing with the turning of the earth, and the crews, except for the pilots at the controls and the navigators at their tables, were able to catch a little sleep. Towards morning they drew in upon the islands and then in the full light of day picked up Diamond Head and came down one by one on Hickam Field. Here each element of the flight spent five days while the planes were being worked over. There was a good deal more talk in Hawaii about the possibility of war than there had been in the States, and the men became aware of a new kind of tension. Even the chances of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were discussed. Colonel Andrew W. Smith, Surgeon of the Hawaiian Air Force, who had decided to make the flight out to the Philippines with the second element, took pains to inquire of some Navy people what the chances were. He was assured that nothing could penetrate the Navy's cordon of vigilance. Smith had met the Group when they came in under their Special Orders and asked what their medical setup for the trip was. He found

PACIFIC FLIGHT

that they had only one man, fresh from civilian life, assigned to the entire Group." Deciding that there should be at least one surgeon along to cover the second element of the flight, Smith had asked for the assignment for himself. The route needed to be surveyed from a medical angle, for it seemed evident that more and more planes would be going out, and that some regular equipment for the flight should be established. Moreover, the men had had no medical briefing whatever for the tropics. Relatively little was known at the time or thought sufficiently important to tell them. For instance, they had not even been warned of as elementary a fact as that one can get ear fungus from swimming in tropical waters. The men were beginning to take stock in other ways also. In their briefing for the flight from Hickam to Manila, orders were issued to combat load all armament. "In the event of contact in the air with planes of a possibly belligerent nation, do not hesitate to bring them under immediate and accurate fire." 1 They had now learned the course they were to fly. The first two legs would follow the route of the Clippers to Midway and Wake. But from Wake Island, instead of keeping on to Guam, they would head southwest to Port Moresby in Papuan New Guinea; then westward to Darwin; and, finally, north to Manila. The purpose of this great southward loop was to avoid having to land on Guam, which the Japanese would be able to pinch off whenever they felt like it. But the hop from Wake to Port Moresby crossed the eastern end of the Carolines in the Japanese mandate and, specifically, passed close to the island of Ponape, which was believed to be one of the strongest Japanese bases. There was no uncertainty about the intent of the orders: what impressed the crews now for the first time was that the ammunition boxes in their B-I7s, with a capacity of from 25 to 50 rounds, seemed inadequate, and that there were only 100 rounds provided for each gun, about enough for one good burst of fire. Some of the men ironically recalled General Fickel's parting wish. But the flight proceeded smoothly. Once more the 30th Squadron led off, to be followed by the rear element on October 27. Both of these next two hops, to Midway and then to Wake, were made in formation with the exception of two planes which were held up at Hickam for repairs
-This was Maj. Luther C. Heidger,

THEY FOUGHT

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or necessary maintenance, and the squadrons flew in a wide-spaced line at right angles to their course to make sure of picking up their objective. Four hours out of Hickam, the 93rd ran into a severe rain squall and dropped down until the big ships were flying less than 500 feet above the sea; but they came out into the clear again and two hours later picked up the Midway Islands, tiny husks of land caught in the bent hook of a reef. Two days were spent on Midway and then, on the morning of the 30th, the rear element took off for Wake. At 7:15 that morning they crossed the International Date Line, so that October 30 became October 31. It was a tranquil day with a blue sea shading imperceptibly into a blue sky and broken, white, and sun-filled clouds through which the planes made their approach to Wake early in the afternoon." Here they found that the reason for the 30th Squadron's being held up was a tropical storm across the course to Moresby. But now time was beginning to run short and their own take-off was set for ten o'clock that same night. The leg to Moresby, longest of the entire transpacific flight, was to be made at night and at high altitude to minimize the chance of Japanese interference. It had been pioneered in the first week of September by the 14th Bombardment Squadron with nine B-17Ds under Major Emmett C. O'Donnell, Jr., universally known as "Rosie." This squadron had been hastily organized from the 5th and rrth Bombardment Groups of the 7th Air Force in Hawaii while an advance agent was sent out from Manila to New Guinea and Australia to check on airfields and the availability of high octane gas.t An amusing incident had occurred when the 14th was crossing the Carolines. They were under orders to preserve radio silence until they were well clear of Ponape. About an hour after sunrise, when all members should have been safely past Ponape, O'Donnell began to call for reports from the other planes. He naturally could not know that the
• By coincidence Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, on his way out to Manila by Pan American Clipper to take command of our air forces in the Philippines, was also held up on Wake by this same bad weather and saw the planes of his future command come in to land.' t This was Capt. Floyd J. Pell, who was later killed over Darwin in the Japanese attack of February 19, 1942.3

PACIFIC FLIGHT

leader of the second flight, Major William P. Fisher, had had to put back to Wake shortly after take-off for quick repairs to a broken oil line. Consequently he was flying about two hours behind the rest and did not come in when O'Donnell requested reports. Finally O'Donnell called Fisher by name and asked for his position. "I'd hate to tell you," Fisher replied. One of the other pilots, describing their reactions, wrote that "every plane in the flight must have echoed to substratospheric chuckles. We knew instantly that Bill was sitting right on top of Ponape at high altitude that very minute in broad daylight!" 4 No such mischance occurred when the 19th Group made its passage above the Carolines. Each flew alone and for the first eight hours they kept close to 22,000 feet, with the crews on oxygen and dozing fitfully. It was a long night for them, but longer for the navigators. They ran into dirty weather-their first taste of a big tropical front. The overcast was so high, extensive, and heavy that for five of the night hours through which they flew, the navigators could get only a very few glimpses of the sky through their octants, They had none of the usual radio aids and, as one said, he was sweating out the weather, not the [aps, when they went over Ponape at half past three in the morning. Well after daylight they started letting down. A little before eight, they crossed the Tabar Islands and the spindle shank of New Ireland with Kavieng 50 miles to the west. Then they were over the Bismarck Sea, themselves now west of Rabaul, except for three or four planes that had to go in for gas.· These swung away down over the-little town, whose streets, deep in the hollow of framing hills, were laid out along the blue curve of the bay with two volcanoes smoking at the harbor mouth. They landed on one of Rabaul's twin airfields t that later they and many other fliers would seek and find at many times both day and night. But now the town drowsed in the midmorning sun and the sulphurous ribbon of smoke from the peak of Vulcan climbed into a flakless sky.
• Among the pilots forced to land at Rabaul were Maj. Birrel Walsh (Operations Officer for the flight), Lt. Walter R. Ford, and Lt. Sam Maddux, Jr. t Vunakanau-across the harbor from Lakunai drome, and on top of a hill.

10

THEY FOUGHT WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

At the airdrome the Fortress crews were receiving their first lesson on Southwest Pacific runways. The surface crust had cracked under the unaccustomed weight of the B-17s and, with the help of the Australian ground crews, the planes had to be dug out. But the others continued on their long traverse into the southwest, beyond the scythe blade of Rabaul's western tip, over the Dampier Strait and the dark blue of the Huon Gulf, until they raised the green New Guinea shore. Buna was on their left, Lae and Salamau on their right, as they crossed it, and for a way the land beneath them lay like a green lowland with deceptive openings in the jungle growth that looked like meadows. But as the ridges lifted southward, the jungle deepened both in color and in the texture of its growth. Behind the ridges the mountain slopes began, knife-edged and fissured, but covered everywhere by the impenetrable green of the jungle. The peaks were lost in towering cumulus clouds, and even at 12,000feet the men in the planes could look out at peaks still higher. Now and then breaks in the clouds gave them glimpses of the wild upheaval of green-walled cliffs and mountain shoulders under them. There might be a chance sight of a native village of little, lost-looking huts in a precarious clearing. Otherwise there was only the unbroken forest, except where a landslip had laid bare the bone of a mountain, and the jungle fell away in broken folds to valleys and chasms at the bottom of which could be seen the white thread of a river pouring downward in a soundless roaring. To the men looking out from the oil-smelling, metal bodies of the planes, it was like looking into the earth's core. These were the Owen Stanley Mountains. The planes with a final lift crested the range and started to slide down the southward slopes in their approach to Moresby. There was a haze that day over the seacoast, like the haze that covers Los Angeles at times, and some of the planes had difficulty in locating the field. A few landed with less than forty minutes of gas in their tanks. . The field was known as 7-Mile, because of its distance from Port Moresby, and lay in a circle of brownish, stunted hills. The runway sloped so that there was only one take-off direction for B-I7s, regardless of the wind. At that time it had a dirt surface and the ground crews that came out to meet the planes were partly Australians and partly native

PACIFIC FLIGHT

II

Papuans. The Australians were plainly worried by the southward drift of Japanese aggression. Some of the American fliers were to know this place well, but only one or two of the planes that lifted from it on those mornings in late October and the beginning of November survived to touch wheels down there again. They flew out with good weather westward over the Coral and the Arafura Seas and picked the north Australian shore up beyond the Gulf of Carpentaria. As they passed over the base of the Cobourg Peninsula, they had their first view of Australia's wastelands, where rivers sink entirely into the sand and the scattered trees look less substantial from the air than their own shadows. The planes came out above the sea once more at Van Diemen Gulf and followed the scalloped coastline into Darwin, the last way station on their flight. This little seaport town of some 1800 souls was supplied entirely by sea. Townsville, the nearest deep-water port, was 1000 miles away. Overland its only link to cities in the south was by 300 miles of narrow-gauge railroad and 600 miles of desert track. But the RAAF men stationed at Darwin brought out stocks of beer they had saved from their rations and threw a party for the Fortress crews. American accounts of this affair are not quite clear, nor is there any reason to suppose the Australian version would be any clearer, for, in the course of their Pacific flight, the Group had become stretched out widely and the leading planes were already in the Philippines by the time the last arrived at Darwin to receive the same Australian welcome. These, except for one that had lost two engines on the hop from Port Moresby," all took off during the night of November 3-4. There were thunderstorms that had to be flown round and a strong east wind that carried some of the planes nearly 100 miles west of their course; but they had the full moon riding the clouds with them till dawn and they saw it going down just as the sun rose, when they were far out across the Celebes Sea with all the Indies, except
• This was Capt. William E. McDonald's plane, which had a hard time getting out of Darwin. It took a week's work to design a special rack for carrying an engine in a B-I7 and then the replacement engine was flown down from Clark Field by Lts. Bohnaker and O'Bryan. The change was effected, but as McDonald taxied his plane out, it broke through the crust of the field, damaging two propellers. Replacement propellers were flown down from Clark Field by Lt. Col. Eubank, piloting General Brereton on his survey trip to Australia and New Guinea. The next take-off, however, was successful, and the plane reached Clark Field on November 20.

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HAD

for Borneo, behind them. Towards 8:30 the tail end planes were raising Zamboanga and heading over the Sulu Sea. They kept well to the left of Negros and Panay, whose mountains were deep shadowed against the morning sunlight. Over the Cuyo Passage they could look down on the myriad islands-small, green-forested bits of land outlined by the thread of their own beaches, with the bright jade water of the shallows ringing them from the darker sea. Here and there were houses, and in the sea the posts of native weirs and now and then men in outrigger canoes. A weather front had been reported off Mindoro. They saw it hanging in the east as they came abreast of the island; but they kept in the clear and by eleven were approaching Luzon. They came into it from the China Sea, striking for the entrance to Manila Bay, and swept over Corregidor and the round heel of Bataan, Clouds hung low over the Pampanga Plain and the top of Mount Arayat was veiled. But they picked up Clark Field, marked for them by the silver shapes of the planes that had preceded them, and the last one of their own flight came down out of a lowering haze a little before noon. The date was November 4. They had flown more than 10,000 miles, almost entirely over water, and delivered their planes without loss and on schedule, except for McDonald's, which was waiting for its replacement engine down in Darwin. The American public knew nothing about the flight and in the light of present-day long-distance flights by B-29s it may not seem impressive; but in 1941 it was an achievement of outstanding quality, for which all members of the participating crews were subsequently decorated. But as they parked their planes along the open borders of Clark Field and turned them over to the ground crews,«< they were not thinking of decorations. There was much to be done. Billeting had to be arranged. Training schedules must be worked out. The Group had to be reor• The ground echelons of the Group had come over under Capt. Cornelius B. Cosgrove, embarking at San Francisco aboard the USAT Willard H. Holbrook on October 4. Another transport, the Tasker H. Bliss, with the cruiser Manchester as escort, accompanied them. They reached the Philippines October 23 and by nine o'clock the same evening were driven out of Manila in busses and up to Clark Field, which they reached about midnight. They were quartered in temporary barracks behind the hangars. These barracks, which later were completely destroyed, had nipa sides and mahogany frames and floors, which impressed some of the men a good deal. Twenty-five or 30 men were assigned to each and they enjoyed the services of Filipino bunk boys and the mess had Filipino KPs. However, for the

THE PHILIPPINE

DEPARTMENT

13

ganized to admit O'Donnell's 14th Squadron and also a Medium Bombardment Squadron, the 28th, which had been stationed in the Philippines for years but whose planes-B-IOs and B-I8s-were completely outdated. This was a strange post for almost all of them. They had a lot to learn about it.

2.

The Philippine Department

ON ITSORGANIZATION full group with headquarters and four combat as a squadrons, the 19th became the only bomber group in the Philippines. It was to remain the only bomber group-with planes-to reach the Islands until the Japanese on December 8 flew in across the China Sea. In its equipment and in the experience and training of its personnel, enlisted men equally with the officers,it was rated one of the most valuable groups in the Air Force and considerable opposition had been expressed to its being sent out to such an exposed station," For the antiaircraft defenses of Luzon were hardly worth the name. A very sobering scarcity of antiaircraft guns and ammunition was made still more serious by the fact that not a single radar direction finder was then in operation. Communications were primitive, depending largely on ground wires, and Air Force transportation had already been found inadequate for handling the movement of some four squadrons between two fields.t
first few days the 30th Squadron had to mess with the 28th, for the Holbrook had sprung a leak and all the 30th's kitchen equipment had come out coated with engine oil. It would have been a good setup for the men if there had been more for them to do in off hours. Some got into town once or twice, but the P-X was about the only diversion they had. Luckily they could get beer there. Most of their spare time was spent sifting the rumors that they were to be moved on, some thought to China. Like the officers, they stilI weren't sure of the score. • Among those voicing objections was General Brereton, who was to command the Far East Air Force throughout its disastrous campaign in the Philippines and Netherlands East Indies, December 8, 1941, to February 24, 1942. Events served only to confirm his original conviction. "Prior to my departure from Washington I stated that in the event of war it was almost certain to incur destruction of a bomber force put in the Philippine Islands without providing adequate antiaircraft defense." 1 t As General Wainwright points out, this shortage was even more serious in the Infantry.2

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WHAT THEY HAD

These conditions would have thrown an added burden on even an adequate pursuit force; but the total pursuit protection on Luzon was afforded by the three combat squadrons of the newly activated 24th Pursuit Group 3 and the 6th Pursuit Squadron of the Philippine Air Force. The three American squadrons were the 17th, 3rd, and zoth, and of them only the last had been equipped with first-line planes for any length of time. These were P-40Bs, which had been received in July. The 17th and 3rd Squadrons were still accepting delivery on their new planes from a consignment of about 70 P-40Es.4 During these same days, the Philippine Army Air Corps's 6th Squadron finally got into the air in something besides their Stearman trainers, when twelve antiquated P-26s were turned over to them. As these deficiencies became apparent to them, it was natural for the responsible command of the 19th Group to feel increasing uneasiness. They had already discovered that passive measures of antiaircraft defense, such as dispersal and camouflage, were next to impossible. When they landed after their Pacific flight, Clark Field was the one available airdrome for B-I7s on Luzon. The only other field in the Islands on which a B-17 supposedly could land was a natural meadow in the Del Monte pineapple plantations on Mindanao, 800 miles to the south. It had not been developed, however, and lacked any servicing facilities. Clark Field itself was turf-surfaced and the ground surrounding it was too wet to carry the weight of a B-17. It had proved impossible to win any appropriation for draining it. All the 19th Group could do in the way of dispersal was to park their planes round the edge of the landing field in such a way that no more than two planes would be in line. But the field lay in the open country well out from the green hills that scarp Mount Pinatubo. Half a mile west was Fort Stotsenburg with its pattern of large white administration buildings, polo field, and neat rows of quarters. Twelve miles to the east the cone of Mount Arayat lifted nearly 4000 feet out of the Pampanga Plain, a solitary and unmistakable landmark. Yet even without these sighting points, the silver of the big planes parked out on the open grass could, in clear weather, be picked up from over 25 miles out by an approaching pilot,"
• As a matter of fact, one pilot speaks of picking up the shine of the planes over 70 miles out when they were parked on the upland field at Del Monte." from

SATAN

J).

ISLANOsff

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
STATIITe: MII-'.

o 10

10

100

zoo

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THEY FOUGHT WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

But if the vulnerability of the B-17s at Clark Field troubled Colonel Eubank and his officers, their presence there put new heart into the little Air Force of which they now formed the offensive arm. How much their presence meant, especially to the few men who had seen the issues clearly, can only be understood by tracing the effort to build an air force in the Philippines. There was a saying out there that when a plane was worn out at home it was sent to Hawaii; and when the people in Hawaii thought it was worn out, they passed the plane on to the Philippines. This was not far from being the truth. The Philippine Department of the United States Army had enjoyed a lower priority rating than the Hawaiian Department, and through 1940 and 1941 the requests of its commanding general, Major General George C. Grunert, for more men, guns, and planes had met with small response. The fundamental reason for this lay in the inability of the United States to arrive at a settled policy for the defense of the Philippines. Ever since our occupation of the Islands in 1898 there had been uncertainty about what the United States ought to do with them. A decision finally was reached in 1934when the passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act granted the Philippines full independence to become effective in 1946. Though this clarified our political intentions, it did nothing to settle the military problem. In fact it raised new questions, which in hindsight may seem foolish, but seemed perfectly legitimate then. Was it worth while, for example, to pour money and material into a defense system when the Islands would be out of our hands in a few years? Some thought that doing so not only would offer provocation to the Japanese but would cause ourselves trouble by leading the Filipinos to question the sincerity of our motives. There was a powerful illusion in those days that the Japanese would never attack the United States in any case and all we needed do was sit it out. Running through all arguments was the old materialistic question of whether the Philippines were worth defending, let alone whether they could, or should, be defended. Like so many other countries through the nineteen-thirties we put over our problems for, a vague tomorrow, and in the vacuum of national

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indecision nothing was done to really strengthen the Philippine Department. It was allowed to remain almost on a Spanish-American War basis, while the Navy's Asiatic Fleet was no more than a skeleton force of one heavy and two light cruisers, a few overage destroyers, and submarines and auxiliary craft. While the United States was hanging fire, the Philippine Commonwealth embarked on a defense program of its own under the National Defense Act of 1935. This program called for land, sea, and air forces purely for the defense of the Philippine Archipelago, and under the plan the Philippine Army was to meet any invasion force at the beaches with such combat strength that the cost of penetration would be excessive. An air corps, an offshore patrol of motor torpedo boats, one regular and 30 reserve divisions, totaling 250,000 men, were to be developed in the first ten years, and during each of the next two decades 30 additional reserve divisions would be organized," A brave start was made in 1935, with a budget of $8,000,000 and the appointment of General MacArthur, former Chief of Staff of the United States Army, as commander of the new Philippine Army with the rank of Field Marshal. The Islands were divided into ten military districts and training camps were established in each. But the yearly schedule was never lived up to, nor the necessary funds appropriated. The Philippines were undeveloped industrially and depended for their equipment on what they could get from the United States. By 1941, their offshore patrol totaled only three motor torpedo boats, and their air corps had nothing but a few obsolete planes. Moreover, as Japan's intentions in China and Malaysia became increasingly clear, President Quezon inclined more and more to the position that since the United States alone could decide the question of war or peace for the Philippines, it was her duty to guarantee their defense until 1946. The development of a Philippine Army, slow though it was, displaced the old established scheme for the defense of the Islands. This was the famous Orange Plan which, conceding that Manila could not be held against a Japanese attack, provided for a delaying action to be fought down through the Lingayen Plain and a withdrawal onto Bataan, where, with water on three sides and the protection of the harbor forts in their

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THEY FOUGHT WITH WHAT THEY HAD

rear, a small army could presumably hold out in the dense jungle and mountainous terrain until major reinforcements arrived from Hawaii, and at the same time itself protect the vulnerable flank of Corregidor. When war came, the Philippine Army was still forming. There were not enough arms for it, and the 90,000 men who filled its one regular and ten reserve divisions and two Constabulary regiments had not received enough training to make their employment in a prolonged open campaign practicable. There seems, moreover, to have been some confusion as to which plan was being followed. General Wainwright in the north, who had been fighting an aggressive battle off the Lingayen beaches, was not notified until the night of December 22-23 that WPO-3 (War Plan Orange) was in effect,' though the decision, apparently, had been reached two weeks before by General MacArthur.· In the resulting withdrawal on. Bataan, which had been made inevitable by the losses our Air Force had sustained in the first days of the war, an army of almost 90,000 poured onto the peninsula, instead of the few small units contemplated under the original Orange Plan; and this, as will be seen, was one of the primary factors in the desperate shortage of rations that made itself felt almost from the first day.] It was plain that the success of an open campaign of this nature must very largely depend on control of the air, more especially when the bulk of the defending army was bound to consist of green troops. For, if the Japanese did attack, all the key points of Luzon would lie within bomber range of their bases on Formosa, the southern tip of which was only 65 miles beyond the northernmost islet in the Philippines and 500 miles from Manila itself. Unlike Hawaii, Luzon could be brought under attack by land-based planes from the very outbreak of hostilities. And the threat against the Philippines was growing in direct proportion to the Japanese expansion southward. Strategically, the Islands not only dominated the approaches to the South China Sea, they also formed the
• According to General Sutherland, the decision was made by General MacArthur after the Pearl Harbor report came in, about 4:00 A,M., and when also a report from a submarine came through that it had sighted 150 Japanese ships heading for Lingayen Gulf. Sutherland gave these reports himself to General MacArthur, who said, "Remove immediately to Bataan." The plan for removal was started the day the [aps landed. t Some Air Force units reached Bataan well supplied by taking along their own food with them, but all extra stores were confiscated by the first week of January and all Air Force units, like the rest of the troops, went on half rations as of January 5.8

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DEPARTMENT

19

geographic center of the great circle that includes the vital areas of Japan, Chiria, Burma, French Indo-China, Thailand, Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, and the Caroline and Marianas Islands-all territory belonging to Japan, seized by her or, in 1941, beginning to fall recognizably within the scope of her imperial ambition. Already the Philippines were half surrounded, and thoughtful men were coming to realize that it was no longer a question of whether the Japanese would attack the Philippines, but when they would attack. Yet, even up to the final month of peace, few realized how little time was left. Still fewer appreciated the vital importance of air power to the Islands, and the effort of such as did to provide an over-all air defense plan had met small response. However, the need for a more vigorous air command had become apparent in Washington and in April the War Department sent out Brigadier General Henry B. Clagett, an old-line Army officer of uncertain health, with a long record of peacetime service and a prodigious knowledge of regulations, which had induced conservative habits of thought and a certain inflexibility of imagination. He understood the gravity of his responsibilities; he was seemingly convinced of the imminence of the Japanese threat; he did not spare himself in his worktwice in the crucial months of summer and early fall he was hospitalized; but he lacked the necessary elasticity of mind and body for realistic preparation for total war." In this he was by no means alone, for there were officers at Air Headquarters at Nielson Field who, even two days after the Japanese attack, were still unable to understand how and why they had suffered such heavy losses. Criticism is easy after the event. A man is what he is. General Clagett is less accountable than those responsible for his selection. With General Clagett, as Chief of Staff, was Colonel Harold H. George, a man who was to leave indelible impressions on the minds of all those who served closely with him on Bataan, and in the hearts of many of them. He had had a long record in military aviation, which included service as a flier in World War I, and it might be said that if General Clagett epitomized the old forces in the Air Corps, Colonel George epitomized the new. They made a striking contrast as they stepped off the Clipper at Cavite on May 4: the General, tall, erect, with gray eyes and thinning

zo

THEY

FOUGHT

WITH

WHAT

THEY

HAD

gray hair, the military stamp all over him; and George, short, his broad shoulders making him seem still shorter, dark-haired, with quick brown eyes. People often speak of him as small: he seemed small only in repose. To their left across the bay lay Bataan, with the long cool outline of Mariveles Mountain that the Filipinos say is like the outline of a sleeping woman. But their interest then must have lain the other way, where, low beyond the water, was the gray and white skyline of Manila, filled, as it often is, with the shadows of moving clouds. Clagett had been there before, years ago, as a young lieutenant. To George it was all new.

3. Inventory: May and June

IT IS DIFFICULT now to realize the extent of this country's military weakness in 1941. About a week before General Clagett and Colonel George landed at Cavite, the Hawaiian Department, which was our bulwark against attack from the Pacific, began to receive its first modern pursuit planes. Captain Allison Ind speaks of the excitement at Wheeler Field when the P-4oS flew in from the Naval carrier that had ferried them out.' Ind, who had been assigned to the Philippine Department as Air Intelligence Officer, was on his way out to join Clagett and George aboard the U. S. Army Transport Washington. Brigadier General George M. Parker, coming out to an Infantry command, was also on the ship, and the arrival of the P-40S during their brief stopover at Honolulu set them speculating on what they would find in their new station. Their first hint came two days before they docked, when the Washington was buzzed by aircraft from Luzon. The Air Corps men on deck must have watched the planes with something close to shock. They were not modern bombers, not B-17s. They were not even the outdated, unsatisfactory, two-engined B-I8s. They were utterly obsolete, ancient B-IQs, slow, vulnerable as pumpkins in the sky, unarmored, and practically unarmed. But bomber reinforcements had arrived. They had just come in, and Ind saw the crates containing them in the hangar line at Nichols Field

LUZON
o
10 STATVTI!

so
MILtS

100

Y Major
o 8aguio ~
d;

air base

'lS' Pursuit

fields in use December 8. Philippine Army Air Corps

Naval Sase, PBYs

... Emergency fields used after December 8.

• The BatGa" (ields shown by number as(O/iowI: , • Orani 2. PilGr 3. 8ataGn Field •• Cabcaben $. MGrive'es Fidds constructed after December 8, but not used Cities and towns Fields plann~d but not completed

after December 8.

Fields constructed and used

[]

o
i:>.

22

THEY FOUGHT

WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

a few days after the Washington docked. They were B-18s. They were never to be used as bombers against the enemy, for as soon as the 19th Group reached Clark Field, the B-18s were relegated to transport work, and by then, since they were not new to begin with, they were in "extremely sad shape." 2 However, the work of assembling them was begun immediately for, though pursuit planes were also waiting in their crates, the possibility of war had become suddenly so actual that it was decided to give the bombers priority. They might be only B-18s, but until the Fortresses arrived they were the only striking weapon the Philippine Department Air Force had. The decision, of course, was General Clagett's, but it was Colonel George who had been its ardent advocate. From the first he had decided that the one hope of successfully defending the Philippines lay in hitting the Japanese before they came near shore. He wanted bombers, more bombers than were ever sent. Aggressive employment of air power underlay his entire philosophy as a soldier. It formed the heart of his plan for the air defense of the Philippines, which, when finally submitted to Washington, was approved by both General Marshall and General Arnold, though by then in the sudden unfolding of events there remained no time to implement it. It was later also to be evidenced in the defense of Bataan, when he showed that his pitifully small remnant of an Air Force, four broken-down P-4os, could still not only sting, but shatter a Japanese landing force. By then his ability had become recognized and his methods respected, but in the months of summer and early fall, perhaps even up to the actual outbreak of the war, there were men in and out of Air Force Headquarters at Manila who regarded George as something of a radical. Strategic use of air power, though its effectiveness was being demonstrated all over Europe, remained a new and disconcerting idea to minds fossilized by prerogative or sheer inertia. This lack of mental resilience is nothing new in armies. The decision to give bombers priority was made hurriedly, for both General Clagett and Colonel George were under orders to leave on a tour of China and Burma to scout for possible air bases for American use in the event of war. George even discussed the possibility of war before his return, and he instructed his staff to prepare for sweeping changes. One thing he wanted was objective folders on Formosa and on all enemy-

INVENTORY : MAY AND JUNE

23

held territory within bomber reach. Captain Ind, starting on the task of gathering data, found that Headquarters had nothing to offer; and he writes of coming back to his office and sitting down at his desk, which had a nail to keep the top drawer locked. He pulled out a blank sheet of paper and wrote "Objective Folder No. I" at the head of it." Those words represented on that day of May 1941 the sum total of our listed information on Formosa. It seems incredible now. It must have been appalling then. For that matter there was little enough on the Philippines themselves: a few fairly good files on districts considered militarily important-one on Corregidor, another on Bataan. And there was also a pretty complete series of photographs, obliques and verticals, of the eighty-odd airfields scattered through the Islands. These airfields were almost all mere turfed plots or natural meadows from which major obstacles had been removed, too small and rough for military aircraft. The Japanese undoubtedly knew nearly as much about the Islands as we knew ourselves. Very likely they knew more. They knew our strong points and our weak ones; they had our fields marked down, radio stations, landing beaches; they had the roads and towns in intimate detail. Their agents were posted all through the Islands, ready and trained for the hour, to cut wires and light beacons and blow roads or bridges. On Mindanao their colony of 25,000 nationals offered cover or refuge for their agents. Their espionage was as effective as the Intelligence Section of the Philippine Department was weak. It was not the fault of the men involved. They were aware of what was going on; but they themselves were only a handful, handicapped everywhere by the lack of funds that had emasculated practically all departments of our overseas installations. The time was overdue for taking stock. There was the air warning system, depending on poorly trained Filipino watchers, and the slow relaying of their telephoned messages. It had been a tremendous job merely to organize the personnel. There was no time to teach them plane identification. In air maneuvers they reported any plane they saw and these messages came in over the limited telephone facilities to Fort Santiago and from there were relayed to Headquarters. In a test before the war, in which bombers were sent north far above Clark Field,

24

THEY FOUGHT WITH WHAT THEY HAD

it was forty-six minutes before the halting reports came in, were relayed to Air Headquarters and up to Clark Field, and the planes there finally took off. The delays were partly due to the watchers and the telephone operators, who though willing and eager enough were far too inexperienced to handle their assignments with the necessary swiftness, and partly to the old and often obsolete equipment which the Philippines had been hitching along with in perfect peacetime comfort. Similar limitations of equipment, funds, and personnel reached deep into all sections of the Philippine Department-infantry, coast artillery, antiaircraft, medical department and military hospitals, transportation, even the much advertised harbor forts all suffered in various ways from the parsimony and blindness of the government in Washington. Fort Mills on Corregidor and its three satellite forts, Hughes, Drum, and Frank, sounded impressive with their underground tunnels and their 12- and 14-inch batteries. But these batteries were fixed, basically designed for repelling naval action. Without control of the air or of the flanking shores of Bataan and Ternate, the forts amounted to sitting ducks-rugged ones, perhaps, but requiring only time and sufficient weight of metal to send them under. As they stood in 1941, with inadequate antiaircraft and supporting batteries, their celebrity served chiefly as a kind of Maginot Line behind which men who did not like their ideas shaken or their easy habits changed could take at least conversational refuge. The Philippine Department Air Force consisted of a single outfit known as the 4th Composite Group. It was made up of one Medium Bombardment Group, the 28th, and the Observation Squadron, the znd, both of which were detached at Clark Field, 60 miles north of Manila, and three Pursuit Squadrons, the 3rd, 17th, and zoth, which together with Headquarters and the Headquarters Squadron were all at Nichols Field, just south of the city. In May 1941, the command of the 4th Composite Group changed hands when Colonel L. S. Churchill, who took over Nichols Field, was succeeded as Group Commander by Major J. K. Gregg, who had formerly had the 17th Squadron," This was the beginning of a series of changes in organizations and channels of the higher command that undoubtedly accounted in part for the lack of a cohesive plan of air de-

INVENTORY:

MAY AND JUNE

fense at the outset of the war." It was in some measure inevitable because of the continual reorganization and expansion made nec;essary by the arrival of reinforcements; and in any case there was little opportunity for group training. But the continual shifting about in the higher echelons was bound to result, among pilots of the individual squadrons, in a loss of confidence in their top command," One happy feature of this particular shuffle in May, however, was that it brought Lieutenant Boyd D. Wagner to command of the 17th Squadron. His name was to become almost a symbol for fighter pilots in the Southwest Pacific, along with those of Ed Dyess, Grant Mahony, Pappy Gunn, and a very few others. May was a significant month for the pursuit squadrons, for it saw their change-over into P-3SS completed. Before this, their standard equipment had been P-26s. The pilots of the 17th and zoth Squadrons, arriving from the States in November 1940, had been surprised, to put it mildly, when they found themselves back in the obsolete type of plane from which they had graduated a year before at Selfridge Field. In fact, when they scratched the paint off a few of these antique numbers, they found some of the identical ships that they had washed out in back in the States. In January, however, the squadrons began receiving a few P-3SAs. These little Severskys had originally been consigned to Sweden, but on last-minute orders from Washington the shipment was diverted to the Philippines. Because the plane had been designed for the Swedish Air Force, it was considerably more powerfully armed than the U. S. model, which still carried only two .30-caliber machine guns firing through the propeller. In spite of suggestions by radical Air Force officers, no guns were installed in the wings of our planes; but the Swedes, being practical fellows, had ordered an extra .so-caliber gun in each wing. Some difficulties occurred in assembling the planes and in pilots' transition to them, for they were naturally equipped with Swedish instrumentation and no English version of technical orders was available.* However, by the end of May the transition had been successfully accomplished and all three squadrons were equipped, if not with actual first-line planes, at least with machines that did not threaten to come apart in the fliers' hands.
• About this time eleven A-27S (AT-6 type planes), intended seized at the Manila docks and were eventually distributed among for instrument training, with similar language difficulties." for Siam, were also the fighter squadrons

26

THEY FOUGHT WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

In the meantime, though, all three squadrons suffered from a shortage of pilots. The 17th and zoth, which had arrived with a full complement, were continually losing men through transfers to other organizations more seriously understaffed. Pilot reinforcements began to come in in February, but not until July were the squadrons brought back to strength, when 100 pilots fresh out of training school landed at Manila. As these men all required further training, a unit for that purpose had to be set up at Clark Field." By then the 17th and zoth had lost about 7S per cent of their original personnel, and ultimately the 17th went into the war with only five of the pilots who had come out with the unit and 3S younger pilots who had received their training in the Philippines for periods varying from one to ten months," Then there were the airfields, or perhaps one might better say, the lack of them. In May there were only four fields on Luzon considered possible for military aircraft. Of these, Clark was the only first-class field-it was, as a matter of fact, the only first-class field in the Philippines, for Del Monte had not yet been developed. As has been stated, it had no hard stand, but was entirely surfaced with turf. Nielson Field, at which Air Headquarters was to be located, lay just south of Manila, between the city and Fort McKinley. It was classed as a fighter field, but had few facilities and was little used by combat planes then or later. Iba, on the Zambales coast well north of Subic Bay, had been a training camp for the Philippine Constabulary. It was to be used for a few short months by the Air Force as a gunnery training field, but it lacked facilities for extended operations. This left Nichols as the principal fighter field. It was about six miles south of the heart of Manila and near the shore of Manila Bay, from which it was divided by the constricted, ramshackle barrio of Baclaran and a curve of the Paraiiaque River. The only approach to the field was down the main road that doubled as Baclaran's village street and then sharp left along a narrow lane that crossed the Parafiaque River on a flimsy two-lane bridge. Except by air, there was no other access and a single bomb, rightly placed, could entirely isolate the airdrome."
• Efforts by ranking Air Force officers to have the lane widened and hard-surfaced ran into one of the maddening bottlenecks of resistance and inertia not infrequent in the

INVENTORY:

MAY AND JUNE

The field itself had been placed on the site of a series of rice paddies and over tho swampy ground along the river. It had never been properly drained and during the rainy season the north-south runway reverted to its original swampy status and was totally useless. It was unique, however, in being the only hard-surfaced strip in the Philippines. As for antiaircraft defenses, there were at this time none at all. This extreme vulnerability disturbed a foreign observer who came at the end of May to make a survey of Philippine airfields in case their use by British and Dutch Air Forces became necessary. He was Group Captain C. Darval of the RAF, at the time Air Officer on Sir John Brooke-Popham's staff at Singapore. On the evening of June 3, a group of officers gathered in Fort Santiago to hear him. He began by saying that in his opinion a sudden air attack, driven home with determination, would practically wipe out our Air Force on Luzon." Lack of dispersal was perhaps our greatest weakness; but also there was our tendency to place air strips close to beaches, and the lack of camouflage, dummy strips, and protection against parachute attack. He hesitated to speak harshly, but he pointed out the dubious value of Nichols and the fact that practically all our air supply was concentrated openly in the Philippine Air Depot, the buildings of which offered easy, obvious, well-known, and inflammable targets. Later on he embodied his findings in a written report, advocating that there be enough landing fields so that not more than one fighter squadron of 25 planes, or one bomber squadron of 16 planes, be obliged to use the same ground. "It is understood that, provided financial sanction is obtained, the full airdrome project can be finished within 90 days. It will be necessary to push on with this if reinforcing squadrons are to be able to operate. Until this has been done there can be no question of the provision of reinforcing squadrons. Air defense schemes, denial schemes, and dispersion schemes are vitally necessary and should be pushed on with all speed." 11 '"' There were none in May and June. Earlier in the report, Darval made clear why, in the event of a Japanese attack, they would strike first against our air power, and the climactic
Philippines, so that the job was still unfinished when the Japanese came. Then knocked half the bridge into the river, leaving a section barely ten feet wide. • The italics are mine.-W. D. E. a bomb

28

THEY FOUGHT WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

point of the seven he listed as essential for a defense plan argued that "arrangements must be made to meet the enemy as far from the shore as possible with naval and air forces. . .. " 12 He also indicated that the Philippines must be attacked by Japan. The two points hung on the same reason: that "war experience in Norway, England, Libya, and Crete shows clearly that a satisfactory air situation is necessary if a seaborne expedition is to succeed. . . ." 18 These points were summarized for the men listening in Fort Santiago on the 3rd of June as quiet boats slid up and down the Pasig River in the growing darkness just beyond the windows. The report, which he wrote after his return to Singapore, was presented to the U. S. Naval Observer there on August 5. It was sent to the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington under a letter of the same date; but it was not until three months later, on November 10, that the report was transmitted to the Army Chief of Staff. Whether its prompt receipt would have materially affected the situation in the Philippines is hard to say, for even in June, as Darval's report itself implied, there was very little time. How little, a few men came suddenly to realize in that same month of June when Intelligence reported a huge Japanese convoy out in the China Sea. Luzon was alerted and went on blackout. Fighter pilots stood by their planes-they were to stay on alert from that time forward, many nights sleeping beside their planes when trouble threatened. It was as though a still, cold wind had blown across Luzon, and the little groups of military men, waiting for invasion at their stations, must have taken stock of each other and themselves with new eyes. For the insufficiency of what they had was now made obvious to all but those habitually blind. But the convoy moved on southward to French Indo-China, and in the Philippines we had another breathing spell.

4- Air Forces, USAFFE

GENERAL CLAGETI reported sick on his return to Manila from his Chinese flight and he had to be hospitalized in Sternberg Hospital, which meant

AIR FORCES, USAFFE

that Colonel George was more or less chained to his desk and that, therefore, the problem of finding new airfields, or sites for them, must temporarily be set aside. Dispersal remained very much on his mind, however, and in snatched spare moments he hunted through Manila for possible underground storage sites for Air Corps supplies, even gasoline, which were then concentrated almost entirely in the clustered buildings of the Philippine Air Depot. He found such a place beneath an old Spanish school building, where abandoned waterwork borings formed storage space underground amounting to nearly thirty acres. George was delighted with his find and instructed Captain Harold E. Eads, a junior engineer officer of the Philippine Department, to draw up plans and specifications. These were submitted to General Clagett; but nothing ever came of the proposal, for there was another plan on hand for driving entirely new tunnels under Fort McKinley.1 By the third week in July, General Clagett had recovered sufficiently to leave on another strenuous mission, this time to Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies. The orders had been radioed from Washington, for the deepening gravity of our relations with Japan made consultations with our prospective allies imperative. General Clagett took with him Captain Ind, who by then had become his aide, and, through a fortunate last-minute decision, Lieutenant Colonel Lester Maitland, the commanding officer of Clark Field. After stopping briefly at Singapore and Kota Bharu, the mission proceeded to Java, where General Clagett was again taken sick and the work consequently fell on Ind and Maitland and three other officers hastily sent out from Manila and Singapore" with instructions to investigate the Dutch reports on nondelivery of promised munitions. The Dutch concern was well founded; they had ammunition for only a few days of war and an air force that was equipped mostly with B-1os, and Brewster Buffaloes for pursuit ships.] But in the course of their inspection trips, Maitland was powerfully impressed by the thoroughness of air raid precautions, particularly slit trenches and revetments, installed by the Dutch, many of whom were refugees from the German blitz and knew from
• Col. H. H. C. Richards and Lt. Fred Walker, Ordnance, from Manila, and Lt. Col. Francis Brink from Singapore. t The Brewster Buffalo, a converted carrier plane, was tough, heavy, slow, with a top speed of under 190 miles an hour and a rate of climb that required 15 minutes to reach 20,000 feet.

30

THEY FOUGHT WITH WHAT THEY HAD

bitter experience what was needed on an open airdrome under air attack. Three months after his return, even in the face of ridicule, Maitland ordered slit trenches dug all round Clark Field. «0 During General Clagett's absence, Colonel George made a complete tour of the Islands with Captain Eads, marking down sites for new airfields and investigating the possible development of small existing strips. By the time General Clagett returned-aboard ship, since he was too ill to travel by air-Colonel George had already laid out in his mind a plan for the erection of scattered airfields throughout the Philippines and had begun work with Eads on a comprehensive and unified plan of air defense against a Japanese attack. But the airfields were slow in building. Military authorities were unwilling to cut corners; owners were reluctant to give up their arable land or rice paddies; no one wanted to accept the fact that war was coming close. It always took a year to lay in an air strip. Of those on Luzon contracted for between July and December not one was properly finished on December 8, and only three were usable at all. Yet after the war began, often with the use solely of native help and hand labor, a strip would be cut out within a single week. The effort to build new fields was still further handicapped by a shortage of engineer troops. There was one battalion of Aviation Engineers, the 803rd, and it lacked one company until it picked up the 809th to fill out its ranks. The only other unit was the 14th Engineers, which belonged to the Philippine Scouts. But if the airfield program was difficult to put across, Colonel George's plan for the air defense of the Islands must have seemed a hopeless cause, for in the first place it was essentially offensive in design. This meant that from the start it called for far greater numbers of men and planes than had previously been considered necessary. It called for raids on Hainan, Formosa, and main Japanese islands themselves. Bombs, gasoline loads, attrition losses, service troops, every detail had been worked out. Instead
• Some have given credit for the construction of these trenches, without which the loss of life on December 8 would have been literally enormous, to Lt. William A. Cocke, Jr., of the 19th Bombardment Group; but the orders undoubtedly proceeded from Maitland and at the time the trenches were called "Maitland's Folly."

AIR FORCES, USAFFE

31

of squadrons, the plan talked in terms of groups-five to eight of them," In the light of air war as it developed in the Southwest Pacific, the plan probably represented minimum forces, but in those prewar days the totals must have seemed fantastic. They seemed so to General Clagett, when he studied the plan in his bed in Sternberg Hospital, to which he had retired on his return from Java. His experience had prepared him for the explosive effect these ~gures might have on the War Department and Congress, and he demanded a complete revision. It was done at the cost of valuable hours of labor, yet when it was done the figures varied only slightly from the original totals. This did not satisfy General Clagett, and he went to work on the plan himself in his hospital bed, altering and cutting wherever he could. Ind says that surprisingly enough the General retained most of George's figures, but he had cut out the sustaining evidence and the arguments that were the core round which George's figures grew.s Time as well as strength was desperately involved. The threat that had lain over the Islands on those June nights, when Luzon was blacked out and men stood to their stations with nearly empty hands, might be repeated any day with another convoy heading into the China Sea. It might follow in the first one's wake to Indo-China, or to Thailand, or Malaya; or it might turn suddenly against Luzon. And for its air cover and to prepare its landing, the Japanese had an air strength of 3000 first-line planes, more or less, to draw on and a completely developed air base less than 500 miles away. George himself believed that the Japanese had a minimum of 3000 planes that they could send down from Formosa against our own tiny force.] Though the 4th Composite Group had gain'td strength in planes and men, it was tactically even less able to defend itself, for in July all air
• As the plan has not been made available to the writer, these figures are inferential, drawn from recollections of Col. George's talks in interviews with his pilots or from direct quotations, which may not be exact, such as Ind supplies.s t RAAF Intelligence Summary listed a total of 2860 Japanese planes including the Fleet Air Arm. RAF figures of November 1941 listed 4500 aircraft of first-line strength.s The December 1941 Memorandum to the Chief of Staff estimated 3227 first-line planes. Interrogations since the war reveal that the Japanese had 2700 first-line planes assigned to fully trained units.s

32.

THEY FOUGHT WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

operations at Nichols Field had to be abandoned. The east-west runway was under construction and the north-south strip had been turned into its customary quagmire with the rains," The entire installation was an island in the midst of flood, connected only by its bridge to solid ground. As a result, the 4th Composite Group had to be moved up to Clark Field, except for the 17th Squadron, which, under Lieutenant Wagner, went to Iba, there to begin an extensive period of gunnery training. Iba lay on the coast of Zambales Province, north of Subic Bay, and the field itself was directly on the China Sea with beach sand edging half the length of the runway. It was a single, sodded strip. A little winding river flowed along the inland border confining usable land to a minimum, and there was no natural cover for a squadron of planes. They were as open to attacking planes as to the wind from the sea. The sooo-foot comb of a mountain range paralleled the coast and offered constant interference with radio communications. Near the field the mountains came crowding so close to the sea that landings and take-offs after dark had to be made cautiously. The only fair approach was from the south, or from the westward in across the sea. Here the Squadron went on its own, discovering for the first time the unreliability of communications in the Philippines and experiencing difficulties of transport and supply. But more serious was the defective operation of their guns, due to poor installation and faulty adjustment. All had to be taken out, adjusted, and their mountings modified." Lieutenant Wagner's report on the subject is said to have let its chips fall where they might; but wherever the true responsibility lay, whether in the States or in the Philippines, the fliers continued to be bedeviled by faulty guns, even in combat, and sometimes by guns that refused to fire at all.* All the rest of our small air forces were concentrated on Clark Field, with the newly arrived pilots to be trained.] and much excitement over the delivery to the zoth Squadron of brand-new P-40Bs. These Curtiss fighters were the first actual front-line aircraft to reach the Philippines,

..

• Careless treatment by the tactical personnel themselves was, however, a contributing factor. Pilots landing after high-altitude flight would leave their planes uncared for. The extremely cold metal of the guns would condense the moist air in the barrels, which quickly became cored with rust.s t A few pilots of the zoth and 3rd Squadrons managed to get in some gunnery practice with the 17th at this time.

AIR FORCES, USAFFE

33

but their employment was delayed because the coolant for their engines had been held up on the San Francisco docks," Insufficient quantities of coolant became a source of constant worry, and there was a theory among the pilots of the 24th Group that the shortage was caused by an overzealous supply officer who could not understand why Prestone was needed by planes flying in a hot climate. Until the coolant did arrive, all that could be done with the planes was to put them out on the line, where they sat helpless and naked in the sun. Meanwhile, construction had been scheduled or was under way on two subsidiary fields-at Rosales nearly So miles due north of Clark Field, close to the Agno River, which later became a feature in General Wainwright'S action down through the Lingayen Plain; and at Del Carmen about 14 miles south of Clark Field. It was a start towards dispersal, but still only a start. Everything the Air Corps had was in the open and, except for the lone squadron exposed at Iba, was still concentrated in two areas on Luzon. The islands to the south, of course, had nothing, though they lay within bomber reach of Palau, in the Carolines, on which it had been known for the past two years that the Japanese were building fortified bases/a Then there were rumors that the Japanese had laid plans for seizing the southwest coast of Palawan, which is the most southwesterly of the Philippines, barring entrance to the Sulu Sea, like a long-boned finger pointing down to Borneo. The Japs had one of their fishing fleets operating there, and they had recently planted a colony of almost three hundred on the small island of Linapacan that sentinels the northern passage into the Sulu Sea." As reinforcements came, if they should come in time, dozens more airfields would be needed, not only in Luzon, but down through all the main Islands. Oxygen was another thing they needed. George and Eads, together making out their lists of essential stores, figured that it would take six oxygen plants to supply the air fleet they wanted, and it was about this time that they put in a requisition for them. The plants never came. July, however, proved a turning point in the effort to prepare the Philippines for war. On the 27th, General MacArthur, who had been recalled to active duty, was placed in command of the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), relieving General Grunert, and including under

34

THEY

FOUGHT

WITH

WHAT

THEY

HAD

his command the untrained and still forming Philippine Army. This did not mean that there was an instant infusion of energy through every channel of what had been the Philippine Department. Habits of long peace are hard to shake. But General MacArthur's appointment was a symptom of the growing interest and concern felt in the States for our farthest Pacific outpost and served to implement the efforts of those men who had been struggling to prepare for war. Requests from the Philippines now carried a new and recognized authority. It was borne in on many more people than had realized it before that the issue of peace or war was balanced on a razor edge, and from this time forward, during the brief remaining months of peace, men and equipment began to reach the Philippines in continually increasing numbers and frequency. For the Air Forces the new command involved further shifts in organization, and on August 5 they were redesignated Air Forces, USAFFE. Once more the 4th Composite Group changed hands, with Major Grover, formerly of the zoth Squadron, taking over from Major Gregg, who now became A-4 in the new setup. Succeeding Grover in the Squadron command was Lieutenant Joseph H. Moore. Clagett of course continued as Commanding General, with George still his Chief of Staff. The Air Forces now operated directly under General MacArthur, except for routine administration and supply, which were to continue through the old channels of what had been Headquarters, Philippine Department. To George this meant the ultimate endorsement of his air plan. In working out its details, he had been necessarily in frequent consultation with MacArthur's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Richard K. Sutherland.s Several days after General Clagett's milder version was submitted, word came from Headquarters that General MacArthur wished to see the original plans. General Clagett authorized Colonel George to transmit them; and, subject to certain changes indicated from time to time by altered circumstances, this original version was used as the basis for air expansion. The arrival of the 19th Bombardment Group was the first concrete evidence of its effect. But time had been lost that could never be regained. Even then, late
• On August 19, Sutherland was promoted to Brigadier General.

FEAF:

OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER

35

as the hour was, few men either in Washington or in the Philippines had yet geared their minds to the swiftness with which time was running out.·

s.

FEAF: October and November

THE INCREASING STREAM

of reinforcements that now began to pour out on the Manila docks raised continuing problems of reorganization, relocation, training, and supply. By October, it had become necessary to move one of the fighter squadrons out of Clark Field to make room for the expected arrival of the 19th Bombardment Group. The 17th Squadron was therefore transferred to its old base at Nichols Field, and shortly afterward, on October 16, the 3rd Squadron took its place at the Iba camp and began gunnery training. Work on the landing strips at Nichols Field had not been completed, and their poor condition resulted in a high accident rate for the 17th Squadron.' However, these two squadrons, and the zoth, which stayed at Clark Field, had now finally reached the fields on which they were still based when the news of Pearl Harbor came, near dawn of December 8. It was now obvious that with the arrival of a bomber group, the old 4th Composite Group would become an unwieldy organization. On September 26, therefore, the 24th Pursuit Group was created, including the three squadrons, now at the three separate fields, as well as Headquarters and a Headquarters Squadron, which were based at Clark Field under command of Major Grover. The 4th Composite Group was to continue a rather shadowy existence at Clark Field for a few weeks more until the 28th Bombardment Squadron was absorbed by the 19th Group. This left the znd Observation Squadron under Captain J. Y. Parker, which operated thenceforward under direct orders from Air Head• The whole reinforcement program still operated on the assumption that the Japanese would not attack before March or April, 1942. This belief was prevalent in many quarters and through all ranks in the Philippines, April being the commonly accepted month. According to General Wainwright, General MacArthur himself held this view as late as November 25,12 though General Brereton felt that MacArthur's confidence in war's not breaking before spring had been severely shaken by November 10.18

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THEY FOUGHT WITH WHAT THEY HAD

quarters, and a Tow Target Squadron which ceased to have much use after the 8th of December." In October the arrival of 35 new pilots from the States brought the pursuit units up to full strength; but the pilots, like the 100 who had arrived in July, required combat training and the program designed for the latter therefore had to be reopened at Clark Field," This completes the long list of shifts and changes in command to which the pursuit force on Luzon was subjected before the war. During October P-40Es began to arrive, and by the middle of November enough had been assembled to equip completely both the 17th and the 3rd Squadrons, which therefore spent their last few weeks of peace in slow-timing their engines, reinstalling their machine guns, and checking out their pilots in what to most was a new aircraft. On the zoth of November, two more squadrons, the zrst and the 34th, both from the 35th Pursuit Group, arrived from the States and were attached to the 24th Pursuit Group pending the arrival of the rest of their group, which of course never carne.' These two squadrons were at only half strength," They came without their planes, for they expected to find new ships ready when they disembarked," Their situation, and that of the 27th Bombardment Group, arriving on the same ship and similarly destitute of its equipment, will be described in the proper place. But their case was only symptomatic of the confusion and lack of correlation in the final efforts to bolster the Philippines. Not only were squadrons and one group sent out without planes, but planes arrived without vital parts, some requisitions were entirely unfilled, and needless muddles were produced that took weeks to unravel. Changing organization, untrained reinforcements, insufficient, hastily assembled, and poorly installed equipment all played their part in the lack of training as a group that was to prove a grave handicap during the opening moves of the Japanese air attack. Lack of decent communications also contributed and, still more, the sheer inferiority in numbers. But behind these, behind what faults there were of omission and commission, behind all the other factors was the lack of time. During peace too many of our people had forgotten, as they always forget, that the one greatest component of war is time. The Japanese had not forgotten this. Their bases had long been ready

FEAF:

OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER

37

on Formosa; their air groups had been trained for synchronized attacks on specific targets, and the Japanese knew all about those targets. They had an essentially accurate picture of our air strength." The network of agents they had built up on Luzon had details near every vital point, ready to go into action with the opening gun. These hidden people were watching every move and, as their reports were turned in, it became only a question of how strong the Japanese were prepared to let us grow. The third and final change in Air Corps organization, and the one that perhaps produced the most profound effect, involved a complete turnover in the top command. On October 7, the War Department assigned Major General Lewis H. Brereton as Air Commander and on October 28 redesignated the Air Force, USAFFE as the Far East Air Force (FEAF), to become effective November 16.1 Arriving on November 3, General Brereton brought a number of officers with him, among them a new Chief of Staff, Colonel Francis M. Brady, which meant that Colonel George, as well as General Clagett, was displaced. The Far East Air Force was then organized t with three subsidiary commands: the 5th Interceptor Command, which went to General Clagett; the 5th Bomber Command, which was given to Colonel Eubank, though he also retained command of the 19th Group until December 10; 8 and the Far East Air Service Command (FEASC) under Colonel Lawrence S. Churchill, which here made its beginning with eight officers and 60 enlisted men. The first strength report of the 5th Interceptor Command lists five officers and IS enlisted men. The 5th Bomber Command was actually a skeleton unit, and though authorized a full T /0 strength:t: had only one officer and 20 enlisted men as late as December 23.9 These were small beginnings. Colonel George was made A-4 in the new headquarters, with Major K. J. Gregg as his assistant. It seems to have been understood that the appointment was to be a temporary one, as actually it was, for by De• The Intelligence Summary used by the Tanaka Force listed U. S. air strength as 130 fighters, 30 bombers, 20 Naval patrol planes. t Though the effective date of FEAF was November 16 and the headquarters as set up continued till then to be called AF, USAFFE, it was to all intents and purposes the FEAF that existed when war broke. ~ TIC-Tables of Organization.

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cember 8 the Supply Section was headed by Gregg, and George had been made Chief of Staff of the Interceptor Command. But he was now devoting much of his time to the lagging airfield program as well as unsolved problems of supply. Rosales and Del Carmen Fields were nearing completion, though of course they were still nothing but raw dirt strips; and work was in progress or about to start on four other auxiliary airfields: two in the great plain-O'Donnell eleven miles northward and San Fernando 16 miles southeast of Clark Field; the third, San Marcelino, about eight miles northwest of the head of Subic Bay; and the fourth, Ternate, at the mouth of Manila Bay, close to the Cavite shore. George was disturbed also by the lack of airfields on Bataan. There was still only a single little zooo-foot strip cut out of the jungle uphill from the road on the site of what afterwards became Bataan Field, but in these prewar days it was still known as "Richards's Folly" after the officer who had been largely responsible for having it built .... In Eads's recollection of the Orange Plan, "A. C. was not considered except for one field-'Bataan.' We weren't supposed to be back there." But it was impossible to get anyone to build more fields there until the Japanese struck. Then when the need for dispersal fields on Bataan itself was recognized, they had to be built under fire. In the meantime the shortage of oxygen had become a matter for concern. None of the six plants requested in the summer had arrived. There was no supply of oxygen in the Philippines that was available to the Air Corps, except for the small amount brought with them by the 19th Group, which was reserved exclusively for their use, and a very little on hand at Nichols Field. Luzon was combed for oxygen plants; but there was only one, located in the northern outskirts of Manila, with an inadequate output that could not be increased. When Eads inspected the plant at the end of Octobe., he found that the Navy shipyard took all the company could produce, except for occasional small surpluses that had been the source of the Nichols Field supply. No fighter squadron at any other base had oxygen,t so when war broke, the ceiling of three
• Cot. H. H. C. Richards, who had been Air Officerin the old Philippine Department. t Col. Eads writes, "I later learned that the oxygen plants we ordered from the States were on the water when war hit us and were diverted to Australia, but I didn't find them there. (However I didn't look too hard because when I got down there, oxygen was not a problem.)" (Letter to the author, dated December 8, 1945.) Cot. Churchill

FEAF:

OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER

39

of the five squadrons was automatically limited to the individual pilot's reaction to altitude. Thus out of constant changes the pattern of the air command that met the Japanese in the Philippines had finally been set. The five leading figures offered some interesting contrasts, both in their past records and in their subsequent careers. Colonel George was the only one to remain in the Philippines after the first sixteen days of war, and of the four who moved south on or before December 24, two, General Brereton and Colonel Brady, had left the Southwest Pacific for the Burma-India theater within two months. Of the other two, General Clagett served as commander of a base section in Townsville, Australia, until his return to the States in March, 1942; and Colonel Eubank continued to head the 5th Bomber Command in Java. He ended his tour of duty in the South. west Pacific by serving through the month of April, 1942, in his old capacity as commanding officer of the 19th Group. All five men had long been identified with the Air Service, but George seems to have held the greatest number of active operational commands. Born in Lockport, New York, on September 14, 1892,he entered the National Guard on July 5, 1916,for active duty during the Mexican Border crisis, and served till October 5 of the same year as sergeant in the 3rd Infantry. On April 15, 1917, he returned to the service, attended Flying School, and upon graduation on September 19 was given an emergency commission as rst lieutenant in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. He went overseas the following month and, after nearly a year of serving as an instructor and then receiving advanced flying training and gunnery training, he began his combat career on October I, 1918, with the 139th Aero Squadron. With them he took part in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives, shot down five enemy planes, earning the title of Ace, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. After the war he decided to stay in the Army and received a permanent commission as
states, however, that there was no oxygen shortage, that if there was a shortage at any base it was because the Interceptor Command had never requested it, that there were 100 Basks on Corregidor when it surrendered. (Churchill note of October II, 1950.) It is possible to reconcile these statements only by accepting the view that the Interceptor Command was thinking in terms of a long conflict. In any case the transfer carts required for the low-pressure system with which the P-40S were equipped had not arrived in the Philippines, so no oxygen was available to the pilots.

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rst lieutenant, Air Service, Regular Army. From March 1925to July 1929, he was stationed at Kelly Field as chief instructor of the Pursuit Section of the Advanced Flying School. Then followed two years in the Panama Canal Zone, largely as commander of the 7th Observation Squadron, after which he was transferred to Langley Field, Virginia, as Assistant Executive Officer. He served successively as commanding officer of the znd Bombardment Group, the 8th Pursuit Group, and the 33rd Pursuit Squadron. In the winter of 1933-1934 was with the Civilian Conservahe tion Corps at Camp Weeks in Vermont, and what may have seemed at the time an odd assignment must have been remembered eight years later in the Bataan jungle. When the Army began to operate the Air Mail in February of that year, George was placed in charge of Section III in the Eastern Zone, embracing the routes from Newark, New Jersey, to St. Louis, Washington to Cleveland, and Cleveland to Memphis. He returned to Langley Field in command of the 33rd Pursuit Squadron in January 1935 and in March joined the staff of the 8th Pursuit Group. Between 1936and 1938he graduated from the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, and the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He then went to Selfridge Field, Michigan, in command of the 94th Pursuit Squadron and was commanding the 31st Pursuit Group at the same field when he received his assignment to the Philippines. He was then forty-nine years old. General Clagett, the oldest of the group, was the only West Point graduate among them. His class was 1906, and he was immediately commissioned second lieutenant in the Infantry, in which he served until 1917,including a two-year tour in the Philippines. He transferred to the Air Service, in which he was to hold a wide variety of administrative posts at airdromes, aviation schools, and in Washington, D. C. Colonel Brady had entered military service through the Officers' Training School at Plattsburg and had had a full and active battle career with the 9th Machine Gun Battalion in the First World War. Like George he decided to remain in the Army and was detailed in the Air Service in 1920.He was a graduate of the Air Corps Tactical School at Langley Field, Virginia, the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth, and the Army War College. In July 1941he was named Acting Chief of Staff, 3rd Air Force.

FEAF:

OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER

General Brereton had been the first of this group to earn his wings, but his approach to the Air Corps was an oblique one. Graduating from Annapolis on June 2, 19II, he served as an ensign from June 3 to June 5 of the same year, when he resigned for the purpose of transferring to the Army. In August he joined the Coast Artillery Corps, but began flying training in August 1912and by May 1917 was a captain in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. During the First World War he commanded the rzth Aero Squadron in France and Belgium and received the D.S.C., among other awards, for conspicuous gallantry in action. He transferred to the Air Service in 1920 with the permanent rank of major. Between wars, General Brereton held various key positions in the Air Force, directing attack training at Kelly Field and commanding the znd Bombardment Group and later the 17th Bombardment Wing. In 1928 he graduated from the Command and General Staff School and was in command of the 3rd Air Force when assigned to FEAF. Eubank, like George, was primarily a flier. He had been commissioned in the Aviation Section of the Signal Reserve in 1918 and in 1920 received a commission in the Air Service, Regular Army. During the First World War he served as instructor, engineer, and operations officer at various fields and graduated from the Air Service Mechanical School. This was followed by work in various staff capacities and as test pilot and chief of the Flight Test Unit at Wright Field, Ohio. Between 1929 and 1937he graduated from the Air Corps Engineering School at Wright Field, the Air Corps Tactical School at Langley Field, and the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth. He then commanded in turn the 32nd and 34th Bombardment Squadrons, and in April 1940 was made commanding officer of the 19th Group. At this time he was rated one of the best all-round heavy bomber men in the service, with an impressive and sound technical mastery of his aircraft. A navigator of the 19th Group has said that Eubank was the best navigator in the outfit. Though most pilots hate the business of navigation and consider it a chore, to Eubank it was both a skill and an art. He was also a good bombardier and gunner. His first demonstration of his ability to organize and lead a long-distance over-water flight came on the night of May 13-14, 1941, when the Group flew 21 B-17Ds to Hawaii. It was a remarkable performance, accomplished without a single mechanical failure, and

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only one ship reported 20 miles off true course at any time. The 21 aircraft all landed within thirty minutes of each other, and in the order in which they had taken off. Of these five men, it was George who most measurably increased his stature as a commander during those difficult opening months of the war. In part this was due to the turn of fate that left him on Bataan in circumstances calling forth his native ingenuity and his ability to improvise. For George had his limitations-an impatience with established organization and a stubborn streak that sometimes made it hard to shake him of his preconceptions. But where in many others adversity bred understandable confusion, it tapped in George a gift of personal leadership that sprang from an open but disciplined heart. The tactics used in fighting the Japanese Zero, as they were worked out by him and his handful of pilots over Luzon, became the basis of our fighter tactics in the Southwest Pacific." In the darkest hours, the little Bataan Air Force he commanded could still strike back, and though it flew off fields directly under Japanese observation, the enemy were not able to clear the sky as long as four of our planes remained. This came from his ability to draw on the best in others rather than from domineering force. His pilots believed in him.
• Maj. Gen. Wurtsmith, then commanding the r jth Air Force, said in an interview on Leyte, June 28, I945, that "all our fighter tactics are about IOO per cent Hal George's teaching." They were, of course, similar to those developed by Chennault and his AVG Group in China. For a brief discussion see below, Part Two, Chapter 8.

II Approach of War: Reinforcement Reconnaissance 6. Mid-November

THE 19THGROUP began preparing for war almost from their first day in the Philippines. Already, during the last of September and all through October, the 14th Squadron had been carrying out intensive unit tactical training in high-altitude formation flying, navigation, bombing, and gunnery, with missions being scheduled at 20,000to 30,000feet. When it was decided to absorb all bombardment units into the 19th Group, the 35 planes were divided equally among four squadrons, with three left over for Headquarters Squadron. There was some opposition to this move as it involved shifting round the crews. Captain Combs, among others, felt that it would have been wiser to retain the three fully equipped squadrons with ten planes apiece and five extra as replacements and not tamper with the crews," but the decision went the other way, and as the Group went into hard training it consisted of the 30th, 93rd, 14th, and 28th Squadrons, each flying eight B-17s. They were eager for work and ran practice bombing missions nearly every day. Schedules were carried out to determine what the Group would need in extended operations away from base. But for several reasons their operations had to be closely figured. Though they had some B-17 parts, the supply was inadequate, and already they began to feel the shortage of engines that was to prove a continuing problem through
• Capt. Cecil E. Combs, CO of the 93rd Squadron. According to Combs the 28th Squadron, commanded by Maj. Fisher, never operated as a squadron in the Philippines.

and

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the first year of the war. The engines in their planes were getting near the 4oo-hour mark, at which time, according to accepted procedure, they should be changed, but as there were nothing like enough engines for a Group change, it was thought necessary to use the planes as lightly as possible. They were to find out, of course, that their engines would run on longer than they had ever dreamed possible in peacetime, but they did not know that then. As stated earlier, the Group had brought their own oxygen with them, but the supply was limited, and they had to be careful of it. Hangar space at Clark Field, which rated as the only first-class airdrome in the Philippines, was inadequate. There was room for handling only two planes under cover at the same time, and consequently, after it was decided to camouflage the planes, all other maintenance work had to be done in the open. To men accustomed to the sort of facilities the 19th Group had enjoyed at home, these must have seemed strange conditions, but they were merely a gentle foretaste of what lay in store for them. By th~ latter part of November the training of the Group had reached an advanced level. Except for one plane," the equipment was in good order and both ground and air crews had adapted themselves to the requirements of the new station. The skill and efficiency of pilots, navigators, and bombardiers was exceptional for that time and would probably be rated very high today, and there can be no question of the quality of the crew chiefs, who proved able to keep their ships running without facilities of any kind. Without them, the Group could not have kept on operating as it did through the opening months of the war. Their weakness was in gunnery, which, with a few outstanding exceptions, seems to have been consistently low grade, not only among the crews of the 19th Group, but later among those of the 7th, after it joined the 19th in Java and Australia.] The men had actually to learn
• This plane had been damaged in landing when the 14th Squadron came into Clark Field at the end of their Pacific flight in the heel of a typhoon. The ceiling was so low that, as the planes flew in over the mouth of Manila Bay, the men at the side windows looked upwards at the barracks on Corregidor; and Teats wrote that "we flew individually at treetop level, right from sea level to field elevation. The visibility was so low that as I came in to Clark the control tower and hangar line suddenly leaped from the fog and rain directly in front of me. I had to pull up sharply to clear them." 1 The last ship to land hooked into an old plane, invisible in the rain from the control tower, and ripped out its tail section. t Col. John E. Dougherty, who became Group Operations Officer, recalling his service in Java and Australia, said that the bombardiers and navigators were good. The gunners

MID-NOVEMBER.

45

their skill in combat. This was due neither to lack of enterprise on the men's part nor to unwillingness to put in practice time, but to sheer lack of training. Why this was so can best be shown by one officer's experience in gunnery training. "I was a cadet, and we had to qualify as expert aerial gunners before we could be rated as aircraft observers. We were given a lot of skeet shooting, then we went over the Pacific in an old B-I8. Once or twice we were allowed to fire the .3o-caliber at a tow-target for practice. Then we fired 400 rounds for the record. In order to assure our making an expert's score, they would bring the tow-target ship as close as possible before we fired. • • ." After that he never fired till he was in combat, nor had he ever fired the .so-caliber except on the ground. The only work he had had with it was to fire about SO rounds from a truck at a moving target they had rigged up at Muroc Field. Undoubtedly this was due to lack of money and means. "Everyone was eager and willing to fire and to train, and we had detailed training programs. But without the means we merely kept up a front .•.• You can't fly airplanes without gasoline, or practice dropping bombs without the bombs, or fire guns without ammunition." In their training flights the air crews came to know the mountains of Luzon. At altitude the proportions of the land are changed and the pattern human life has traced on it is less significant. People in the lowlands know the mountains by their vertical faces or the night shadows of their peaks against the sky, but the flier sees them in their true relation to the land. More than two thirds of Luzon is occupied by the mountains. They lie in four main ranges running north and south, but knife-edged ridges extend like ribs from the central vertebrate peaks far out into the lowland. They are entirely green, with either dark forest growth or grass slopes that are far brighter than the variant green of the plains. They have the look of great antiquity, like greening skeletons of an older earth, and in places where a landslide has bitten unduly deep, sometimes the rock shows through as white as bone.
they had were never up to them and "could only hit a plane if it ran up to the gun barrel:' Many of these gunners, however, had never, as will be seen, fired a machine gun at an air target till they took off on their first combat mission. Some had never fired a machine gun at all.

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The greatest of the ranges is the Cordillera Central, some of whose peaks lift over 9000 feet. Two hundred miles long and 70 wide it runs from a little north of the great Lingayen Plain nearly to the north coast. West of it are the low Illocos Mountains facing the China Sea. East is the Cagayan Valley, which, with Aparri at its mouth, forms one of the main invasion routes from the north. Between the Cagayan Valley and the Pacific are the Sierra Madres. They form a wall down the east coast of Luzon from the northern tip to Mauban in Lamon Bay, well south of Manila. These three ranges are linked by the Caraballo Mountains, a transverse chain that forms the barrier between the great central plain and the Cagayan Valley. The fourth range, standing alone between the central plain and the China Sea, reaches from the tip of Bataan Peninsula to the Lingayen Gulf. Its major peaks rise from 4000 to nearly 8000 feet. Only two roads cross them, and both of these are on Bataan. In 80 miles there is only a single cart track, and people in the seacoast towns, like Iba, must drive around the mountains to reach the central plain. They are heavily forested, except for the grass slopes of their eastern foothills, and are fissured by steep and dark ravines. Only the Negritoes can live in them. They are called the Zambales Mountains. Thus it will be seen that the mountains entirely govern the land approaches to the great central plain that is the heart of Luzon, and therefore of all the Philippines. It lies open only in the north, where it meets Lingayen Gulf, but it can be approached from the south below the end of the Sierra Madres from Lamon or Tayabas Bay. Its main features are Mount Arayat, on which the Filipinos believe the Ark was landed, and Manila Bay, whose island forts are like pebbles in its mouth, with the city of Manila on its inner shore, snared in the loops of its rivers. South of the city Laguna de Bay lies in the heel of the flat land like an incredible, three-toed footprint filled with water. All the plain is under cultivation. Fields, rice paddies, plantations of coconut trees that look from the air like printed rows of asterisks are loosely threaded by the narrow roads, occasional telegraph lines, and the single track of the railroad. The little villages or barrios are brown and blend with the earth; only the larger towns show red or galvanized

MID- NOVEMBER

47

roofs, or the high white or yellow stucco walls of churches. The plain never rises more than a hundred feet above sea level. It is open everywhere and drowsing under the sun, and life on it moves slowly, even its railroad trains. The only swift thing a flier may see in crossing it will be the shadow of his plane. To some extent the mountains also influence the air approaches. They are apt to have weather of their own and often by noon the high peaks will have gathered clouds. It is not safe practice anywhere in the Islands to enter a cloud bank if it drops below 5000 feet. In bad weather experienced pilots hold their courses 50 to 100 miles offshore until opposite their objectives, when they head straight in to land underneath the clouds. And then the mountains do strange things to radio reception. The airfield at Iba, for instance, now and then had great difficulty in getting through to Manila. December 8 was one of the worst days. Whether they understood these things or not, the Japanese made good use of the mountains in their first attacks on Luzon. By mid-November there undoubtedly still were men in the Philippines who clung to the belief that if the Japanese attacked it would not be till spring. But the signs of war were multiplying. During September and October Manila was visited by the Chiefs of Staff of the Dutch commander in the N. E. 1. and the British in Singapore, and it had become plain that in the event of war, the lifeline of supply to the Philippines would be up from Australia through the Netherlands Indies. This especially applied to air reinforcements, for by making use of Dutch airfields scattered among the islands, it would be possible to fly fighter planes from Darwin to Manila. The route worked out by the Intelligence Section ran from Darwin to Koepang (in Dutch Timor )-to Kendari (in the Celebes)-to Balikpapan-to Tarakan (both in Dutch Borneo)-to Sandakan (in British North Borneo)-to Del Monte (Mindanao)-to Santa Barbara (Panay)-and finally to Nichols Field. But it had now become obvious that a survey of Australia's possibilities as a base could no longer be put off. If war broke suddenly, Australian military, political, and industrial contacts would be vital necessities. Colonel George had been selected as General MacArthur's representative for the trip, but it

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was impossible to spare him, and Captain Pell, who had done the preliminary liaison work for the 19th Group's flight, was assigned in George's place to accompany General Brereton," The party was a small one; and they had only days in which to fulfill a mission that in ordinary times would have taken months, certainly weeks. Colonel Eubank was piloting the plane, and besides Captain Pell there were Major Charles H. Caldwell, who had come out from the States with Brereton and for a while doubled on his staff as A-2 and A-3; Captain Norman L. Llewellyn, Brereton's aide; Captain Eads; and Captain Ind." They took off from Clark Field in a B-17 before dawn on November 13 and set course straight for Darwin. The floodlights were put out behind them. Dust raised by the big ship in its rush across the field settled unseen through the velvet darkness. The familiar sounds of the Philippine night took over reassuringly again. The lizards outside the quarters could be heard uttering their small uncensored obscenity as they had been doing for centuries before Englishspeaking soldiers arrived to understand them. But there were currents of disquiet that had reached down that night from Headquarters to at least three points on Luzon. At Clark Field, at Nichols, and at Iba, the three squadrons of the 24th Pursuit Group had gone on a new and stiffer alert. From this time forward their planes remained armed, fully loaded, and in constant readiness with pilots available on thirty minutes' notice.' Though Headquarters in Manila had been warned by Washington during October of increasing tension in our relations with Japan, there was no need to urge our Far East Command to hurry its preparations for war. Even if the Japanese were to hold off till April, time was all too short. The Philippine Division, during late summer and early fall, had . been put through offensive combat training in the field. Now in midNovember troops were moving north from Fort McKinley for what were planned by General Wainwright t to be December maneuvers in the area north of Tarlac," Mobilization was in process, and Filipino Divisions were being inducted into the United States Army as rapidly as the Fili• Pell, however, did not make the flight with Brereton and Eubank but went separately through the N. E. I. and Java. According to Eubank's recollection and Ind's account, the trip began November 16, but I have here accepted the date given in the Brereton Diaries.3 t MacArthur had given Wainwright the command of the North Luzon forces in September, following General Grunert's return to the States.

REINFORCEMENTS:

NOVEMBER 20

49

pino officers could be trained in Divisional Command," Intelligence reports of increasing Japanese activity down through the China Sea were confirmed by reconnaissance by friendly aircraft, which, however, was necessarily of a limited nature. Both Army and Navy Far East Commanders were to recommend taking aggressive action before the Japanese attacked us,' But in Washington it had been decided that this country must continue its efforts to achieve peace through diplomatic channels, and this policy was persevered in until the actual beginning of war. Though some felt, as Secretary of War Stimson did on November 28, that the President's warning in August against further moves by Japan towards Thailand justified the United States in attacking without further warning," the idea of doing so was repugnant to our sense of national honor. The effect of this policy was of course to raise still higher the odds against our slim defenses in the Philippines; but while our government carried it forward with sincere hope for its success, the Japanese were using it for their own ends. Manila had a glimpse of one of the moves in their game, when on November 6 newspapers announced that a special Japanese minister was traveling to Washington on the Hong Kong Clipper. The flying boat landed in Manila Bay and took off again November 8 with Saburo Kurusu aboard. He reached Washington on the 16th, and on the 18th he called on Secretary of State Hull and President Roosevelt to present his credentials and initiate the hypocritical negotiations under which Japan concealed her final moves toward war.

7. Reinforcements: November

20

ON NOVEMBER 20 a convoy consisting of the S.S. Coolidge and the USAT Winfield S. Scott entered Manila Bay escorted by the heavy cruiser Louisville. The ships had left Hawaii on the 6th, and it was only then that the rank and file aboard were officially informed that the code word "Plum" stenciled on their gear stood for the Philippines. At night the ships steamed under complete blackout; but except for one day when the Louisville rolled over on her side and, swinging her guns, took

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out after a dark blot on the horizon, the voyage was made without incident; and an hour later the Louisville was back in her place.' They stopped off Guam while the Scott went in for water but no one went ashore. They came into Manila Bay in the full heat of the day and the Coolidge lay for over three hours at Pier 7, which was the longest pier in the world, before her passengers were allowed to disembark 2-even then officialshad formalities to observe. The Scott, among other items, carried a deckload of light tanks." Aboard the Coolid ge were four Air Corps units: the 5th Air Base Group, which almost immediately moved down to Mindanao; and the zrst and 34th Pursuit Squadrons and the 27th Bombardment Group (Light), all three of which remained on Luzon. These units were the last reinforcements received by the Air Corps in the Philippines. The fighter squadrons, which belonged in the 35th Pursuit Group," were at roughly half pilot strength-the 21Stwith 154 and the 34th with 16; 6 but both had brought out their full ground echelons. The remaining pilots were expected on the next ship with the rest of the Group," but they never reached the Philippines.t The squadrons had brought no planes with them as they expected to be equipped at Nichols Field on their arrival. But though they found preparations going forward furiously at Nichols Field, there were no P-40S waiting for them. Instead they were issued some of the well-worn P-35s that had formerly been used by the 3rd, 17th, and zoth Squadrons. The zrst Squadron, which was under the command of Lieutenant William E. Dyess, was based at Nichols Field, from which the 17th also operated. They flew in their P-35s until December 4, when they began receiving brand-new P-4oEs from the Air Depot as fast as the planes could be assembled. Their old P-35s were passed on to the 34th Squadron, which thus finally acquired a total of about 25 planes," After five days at Nichols Field, the 34th was taken by its commanding officer,Lieutenant Samuel W. Marrett, out to Del Carmen, one of the new airfields, where they set up operations as well as they could. They
• The 35th was also the parent group of the zoth Squadron. but from there Headquarters Squadron and the 35th Interceptor Control Squadron were sent on to India in the convoy that left Melbourne on February 12, 1942.

t The Group went to Australia;

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were a very youthful outfit, and except for Marrett himself, the Operations Officer, and the Adjutant, the air echelon was composed entirely of second lieutenants," Del Carmen must have been something of a shock to them. It was a raw dirt strip cut out of the countryside close to a small river. The town of Floridablanca was three miles away, but it had little to offer. The field itself had no facilities of any kind, and the Squadron were thrown entirely on their own resources. They had to build their gun emplacements and revetments. There was no running water and no latrine and the stream was used for all purposes. The dust on the strip presented an enormous problem, as it did, for that matter, on most of the new strips on Luzon; but at Del Carmen it was something special. It lay six inches deep over the whole strip and a quick squadron take-off was a sheer impossibility. It might be as long as three to five minutes after one plane had taken off before the pilot in the next could see at all. Moreover, due to the fact that their P-3Ss were long overdue for an engine change, this dust helped make maintenance even more difficult than it would normally have been under such primitive conditions," The men worked hard to establish themselves, though, of course, they did not know that they had just thirteen days to prepare for war. The 27th Bombardment Group had also arrived without planes, besides being minus one squadron. Its S2 A-24 dive bombers, which would measurably have corrected the lack of dive bombardment in our Philippine air strength, had been left behind on the San Francisco docks. While the Group was still at sea, the rumor went round that the planes were following them on the Meigs; 10 and just before December 8, the Group Commander, Major John H. Davies, received word that the transport carrying his planes had left Hawaii. But by then it was too late; the planes never came. Hope, though, died hard, and even after several days of war, the mere rumor that their planes were on the docks was enough to send the 16th Squadron rushing to the waterfront." It is a cardinal principle of warfare never to send an organization into a combat zone without its tactical equipment; but when the 27th Group left San Francisco we were still at peace. Still more ironical, however, was the fact that when a small contingent of the Group's pilots finally found their planes waiting in Australia, the planes could not be used for several weeks because they lacked several essential parts.

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In the meantime the 27th was sent out to Fort McKinley, which now served as a reception center, and set up their camp on the parade ground. The field they were to use when their planes arrived was San Marcelino," near the head of Subic Bay above Bataan. When Major Davies went up to look at it, he found a natural field close up against the mountains with trees and brush surrounding most of it. The usable part was perhaps 300 by 1800 yards and natives were still picking rocks out of its sandy sod. It was a desolate spot, in a dry river bed, and Clark Field was 30 miles away across the mountains. As at Del Carmen, there were no facilities of any sort and a detachment was sent in to start building quarters and help work on the strips while the rest of the Group stayed on at Fort McKinley, waiting for their planes and wondering what to do with their time. Finally they were set to filling sandbags and building revetments at Nielson Field, which was bare of natural camouflage or protection of any sort. In their frustration, the men seem to have gone in for filling sandbags in a large way. When they had used up 100,000, Captain Edward N. Backus was sent off to draw another 150,000.As less than 500 were available at the depot, Backus went to see the colonel in charge. The colonel laughed, and told him that though he had authority to draw sandbags locally and the manufacturers could turn out 100,000a week, he did not think there was enough of an emergency to justify spending Government funds for such a purpose. This was the 6th of December." The skeptical colonel had something on his side, however, for the half-built revetments were never used. Next day the filled sandbags were loaded on trucks, carted over to Air Headquarters, and stacked around the walls. Several days after the Group's arrival four of the more decrepit B-I8s were turned over to the air crews and the process of getting in flying time was begun in a more or less hair-raising fashion. But these prewar jaunts to and from San Marcelino and Clark Field were about the only missions flown by the 27th Bombardment Group in the Philippines. The 5th Air Base Group had been sent out to set up a base for the 7th Bombardment Group, which, with its B-I7s, was expected early in December. The day after landing their commanding officer, Major Raymond T. Elsmore, reported to FEAF Headquarters, where it was

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53

decided that he and his group should take over the operation of Clark Field. He went up there the same day by air to look the situation over, but on his return to Manila he found a call waiting for him to report to Colonel George, who was still A-4 of FEAF. While he had been up at Clark it had been decided to open up Del Monte, on Mindanao, as an air base, but George said that whoever went down there would be starting from scratch. There was only one field big enough to accommodate all types of planes, and there were no facilities at all-no hangars, no barracks, no supplies, no nothing, as George put it. He had told Elsmore that the 5th Air Base Group could have Clark Field, but he hoped they would go to Mindanao. Elsmore asked if he could talk it over with his officers, and George said to go ahead. It was not an easy decision to make, for Clark Field, besides being the best and largest airfield in the Philippines, with plenty of barracks and quarters to take care of the Air Base Group, was also the base for the only bombardment group. But when it came to a vote almost all the men voted to take on the pioneering job. In the discussions that followed, Colonel Brady had stated that it would take the Group two to three weeks to get ready; 14 but within three days after two small interisland steamers had been turned over to them, men and supplies were aboard and moving out of Manila Bay. Next day Elsmore and his staff flew down in two B-I8s which, after considerable wrangling, had been assigned to them for base planes. Off the island of Masbate, they overtook the two ships with the Group on board," proceeding one behind the other. They made small and apparently immovable tips to the arrowheads their wakes had traced on the Sibuyan Sea. But the planes bore west of the ships' heading, across Cebu with its pointed grass-green mountains, and Bohol, and the Mindanao Sea. Then as they came in above Macajalar Bay, the high Bukidnon Plateau opened before them like the revelation of a different world. Its rolling grass plains were seamed by deep and twisting ravines, and on either side the mountains stretched to the southward under canopies of broken clouds. The shadows of the planes came up from the sea, swept inland, leaping the ravines and racing past the winding red dirt roads, and finally touched wheels again as the planes landed on a little golf course set among pineapple plantations. Here they were met by the manager

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of the Del Monte Corporation, J. W. Crawford, who also held the contract for erecting their barracks. There was not a stitch of cover for the airdrome, and the second day after his arrival, Elsmore started locating and laying out seven more fields within a Is-mile radius. By then the two steamers had docked at Bugo, a little hamlet on the tip of Macajalar Bay, where the road from Del Monte came down off the hills and turned along the coast for Cagayan. The Del Monte Corporation had a cannery there and a pier at which the two little steamers, the Legaspi and La Touche, tied up. The men spent the next couple of days unloading them and getting their supplies up the 18 miles of climbing road to Del Monte. They pitched their tents alongside the field. Major Elsmore commanded the base but the men worked under Captain Herman A. Little. It was a neat camp; the tents were beautifully lined up. You could have laid a straightedge down the entire row. Then they started on the air strip. It was the best natural meadow the men had ever seen. The sod was on hard ground and would hold anything in any weather. No grading was necessary. All they had to do was cut the grass. They got hold of a tractor mower and the few farmers in the outfit took over. They refused to let anyone else in on the job unless he was a qualified farmer. On December 3 they were joined by two Ordnance Companies: the ']Olst (Air Base) and the 440th (Bombardment), which came in to Bugo on the Mayan, but their ranks were not full. A second contingent was to leave Manila on December 10 on two small ships, loaded with ammunition and 110,000 gallons of aviation gasoline, and arrive only after a harried voyage." These outfits together built their camp at Tankulan, about a mile and a half from the airfield. This spot, which
• These two ships were the Pisquataqua and the Samal. The chief difficulty they had to surmount was the conviction of the Samal's skipper that they should go ashore and take to the hiIls. Several times they sighted planes, which added to the skipper's enthusiasm about the woods; and there was a good deal more trouble in Cebu, where they had to unload supplies and ammunition and most of the civilian passengers, and hold onto the skipper at the same time. They set out for Mindanao by night and just at dawn they sighted a Japanese destroyer which had made a run across the Mindanao Sea to intercept them; but by then they were in sight of Bugo dock and out of the destroyer's range .••• The final contingent, of the 70Ist Ordnance Company, left Manila several days after this on the ill-fated Corregidor, which went astray in our own minefields at the mouth of the bay and was blown to splinters with a heavy loss of life. Lt. Macgowan, who commanded this contingent, was rescued and later fought on Corregidor.

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became known as Camp 29, was where most Air Corps personnel were to put up during their stay at Del Monte. As soon as the airfield was finished, it was designated Del Monte No. I-the golf course being Del Monte NO.3, though it had been in use as an airfield for some time before the 5th Air Base Group arrived. Mainly in those early days, the men worked on their camps and the airfields. It was a busy life, but a peaceful one; and the bare grasslands with the sweep of cloud shadows upon them made a few men think of the prairies. In the short time since their arrival, though, Del Monte had changed; and now native Filipino help had come in to work on barracks and air strips. Trucks besides those brought by the three outfits were hired from local sources, and the roads continually flew plumes of dust. But many of the men could not shake their sense of remoteness. They had not yet had time to explore Cagayan, the little seacoast town west of Bugo and 20 miles away by road. To them, at night, the hard and angular shapes of the mountains carried desolation. Then on December 6, the dawn sky was filled by the roar of airplane engines, and before the night shadow was fully lifted from the airfield, B-17s began dropping down to it one by one, their silver shapes dimming as they sank out of the upper light. There were 16 of them-the 14th and 93rd Squadrons." They had .left Clark Field hurriedly the night before, and because they expected to stay only three days, they had brought very few supplies. None of the barracks had yet been completed and, as there were not enough tents to house all the air crews, many of them slept in their planes. Del Monte's communications with the rest of the world were still very uncertain, and the men had little information of what was going on on Luzon. Time hung heavy on their hands. The only diversion was a visit to the P-X, a makeshift shack that had been run up almost on the day the base was opened. But all the P-X had to offer was a single brand of beer called "San Miguel Beer for Convalescent Mothers." It was weak, black, and mildly reminiscent of stout. The men bought it anyhow and took it back to the airfield. There, in the evening, Sergeant
• Two full squadrons were sent, barring Lt. John Carpenter of the 93rd, whose plane (which had been Lt. Connally's on the Pacific flight) both then and later had continual generator trouble. But Lt. Parse! replaced him to bring the 93rd up to strength.16

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Wilbert A. McClellan of the 93rd Squadron began composing that ultimately grew into hundreds of stanzas of increasing It was called "The Gypsy Ninety-third," and other men, some undoubtedly from other squadrons, aided in its composition. second night of their stay at Del Monte, which was the last

the song ripeness. of them On the night of

peace, there were still only a few stanzas, but enough to sing, and they began mildly and factually: There's a pilot in the cabin, And a bomber in the nose, A tail full of gunners, And off she goes To some far-off place Of which we've never heard, But we don't give a damn In the Gypsy Ninety-third. The men sang it to the tune of "Turkey in the Straw" as they sat in their tents or underneath their planes with starlight on the wings above them.

8. Reconnaissance:American and Japanese

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS that led up to the abrupt transfer of half the bomber force in the Philippines from Clark Field to Del Monte had begun in the small hours of the morning of November 28 with the receipt at Headquarters of the following radio:
NOVEMBER GENERAL, P. I.

#624
PRIORITY COMMANDING MANILA,

27, 1941

u. s. ARMY

FORCES IN THE FAR EAST

Negotiations with Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes with only barest possibilities that Japanese government might come back and offer to continue. Japanese future action unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot, repeat cannot, be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act. This policy should not, repeat not, be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might

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jeopardize the successfuldefense of the Philippines. Prior to hostile Japanese action you are directed to take such reconnaissanceand other measuresas you deem necessary.Report measurestaken. Should hostilitiesoccur you will carry out the tasks assigned in revised Rainbow Five which was deliveredto you by General Brereton. Chief of Naval Operations concurs and requests you notify Hart.·
MARSHALL

General MacArthur acknowledged receipt of this radio at 4:53 that morning and reported that reconnaissance had been extended and intensified in conjunction with the Navy. "Ground security measures have been taken. Within the limitations imposed by the present state of development of this Theater of Operations everything is in readiness for the conduct of a successful defense." FEAF Headquarters had been notified as well as Admiral Hart, and later in the day General Brereton received directions by radio from General Arnold to instruct all establishments and units under his command to take immediate measures to protect themselves against subversive propaganda, espionage, and sabotage. "This does not, repeat not, authorize any illegal measures. Avoiding unnecessary alarm and publicity protective measures should be confined to those essential for security." General Brereton had returned from Australia with his party only two days before. After finishing their conferences in Melbourne, they had flown to New Guinea and taken off from Port Moresby because Eubank wanted to see if the flight from there to Clark Field could be made in one hop. It took the B-17 fourteen hours and there were about 200 gallons of gas left in its tanks when they landed. The narrowness of this margin demonstrated the need of an emergency landing field for planes coming up from Australia if Clark Field should happen to be closed in by weather and was the main reason for the quick decision to open Del Monte, for Del Monte and Clark Field were almost never closed in at the same time. In accordance with his instructions from General Arnold, Brereton called all air commanders in to Headquarters at Nielson Field and ordered all air units on a full war alert. He summarized the international
• Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Commander of the United States Asiatic Fleet.

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situation and emphasized its seriousness. All air troops were to be alerted and prepared for action at once-this applied to all command posts, communications and message centers, hospitals and transportation as well as to air crews. Blackout conditions were to be put into effect at once, shelter pits dug, gas masks issued, sandbags filled and defective bags replaced. Antiaircraft defense was to be ready and under guard and manned in dispersed positions near aircraft at all times. Taking notes, Colonel Eubank jotted down instructions specifically applying to his command:
Practice bomb loading and fusing. . . . Protect all your facilities. . . . Check your alarm system and establish liaison with Ground Forces for local airdrome defense.... Planes ready for immediate action. No non-tactical missions. Complete combat crew and full load of ammunition to be carried at all times. Don't waste time. . . . Assemble officersand noncommissioned officers. Explain the situation to them. Tell them that work and hardship are a part of war .... Exercise close supervision and emphasize flight discipline. Conservation of equipment is all-important .... Absolute secrecy must prevail and no discussion of the situation outside of official assemblies. Again emphasize war footing for all missions. . . •

On his return to Clark Field, Eubank called his men out on the line and talked to them there in the open sunlight in front of the Bachelor Officers' Quarters. Behind him the great cone of Mount Arayat dominated the plain, but its peak was insubstantial in the haze. Though Eubank's voice with its slight drawl was not raised, his words came to the men clearly as he told them of the imminence of war. He spoke briefly of the need and purpose of dispersal and explained why still more slit trenches needed to be dug. Some of the men had the feeling that this actually was war itself, but others were sheepish about having to wear helmets and carry sidearms and gas masks, and they made cracks about "play soldiering." They were drilled from now on in a series of day and night practice alerts and, because bomb-handling equipment was one thing they had no lack of, they became proficient enough to load the entire group in thirty minutes. But there were no more leaves to Manila, and even when they went up to Fort Stotsenburg only half a mile by road, they had strict orders to keep their transportation with them at all times.

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The next evening, November 29, was the night that the Army-Navy football game was to be rebroadcast in Manila. They make a great deal of the game on the Philippine station and both Services send cheer leaders to the shindig at the Army and Navy Club. This year Captain Colin Kelly was to be one of the cheer leaders and a good-looking mule had been lined up; but neither he nor any other member of the 19th or 24th Groups attended." The only Air Corps Personnel there came from Headquarters or the 27th Bombardment Group, which had no planes. This alert was never relaxed in any particular; it was still in full force on December 8. The need for long-range reconnaissance now became vital, especially as the air warning service was still in a thoroughly primitive state of development. It is true that the first radar set in the Philippines had just been installed at Iba; t but due to the vagaries of the Philippine telephone system it took from five to twenty-five minutes to get reports through to Air Headquarters at Nielson Field," As has been pointed out, moreover, radio communication between Iba and Nielson was at best uncertain. General Headquarters enjoyed no such services as the Japanese espionage network supplied to their commanders, and it was now evident that in air reconnaissance lay our sole hope of gaining advance warning of a hostile movement. The zones to be watched were laid out on the map-the larger area being turned over to the PBYs of the Navy's Patrol Wing Ten under their Captain Frank D. Wagner. The bulk of their 30 planes, stationed at or near Manila, covered the China Sea west as far as the coast of IndoChina, northwest to Hainan, and north to Formosa. Besides these patrols,
• Nor did any Navy personnel attend. Radio reception was all fouled up anyway, so very little of the game came through.' t According to Col. A. H. Campbell, Chief of Aircraft Warning Service, a second radar set was in operation outside of Manila on December 8 (AAF IN WORLD WAR II, Vol. I, p. 186, note 96); but since no other source mentions it, the set at Iba was almost certainly the only set in full working order, as stated in the Brereton Diaries (p. 65), 241h Pursuit Group, History 0/ the 5th Air Force, Sheppard Statement, and elsewhere. Another set, similar to the one at Iba, was in process of being set up on the northwest tip of Luzon, 60 miles from Aparri; and still another (a mobile set) was on its way to the south of Manila when the Japs struck. It became mired in swampy going and its crew was forced to blow it up to keep it out of Iap hands. Some lighter units also arrived in the closing days of peace and a couple were supposedly in operation on Bataan after December 25.2

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the entrances to the Celebes Sea were covered by planes attached to the seaplane tender Preston in the Gulf of Davao watching to the eastward, and four light planes on location with the Heron off the southeast tip of Palawan Island to watch the western passages. Farther south along the northern borders of the Indies, the Dutch were running their own patrols.' This left the area northward from Manila. It was divided into pie-shaped sections, one reaching to the tip of Formosa and the other covering northern Luzon, the small islands to the north, and then running up the east coast of Formosa. These segments were assigned to the 19th Group. They began flying reconnaissance missions on the 29th of November, two planes taking off from Clark Field each day, though occasionally extra missions were run. Their orders were to look for enemy shipping but not to fight unless they met opposition, and not to cross the International Boundary," For the first few days these missions were uneventful. Then on December 2 the PBYs reported 20 Japanese ships in Camranh Bay, on the lower southeast coast of French Indo-China. Next day 50 ships were reported in Camranh Bay, including destroyers and cruisers. On December 4 there were none. Further reconnaissance had to be abandoned because of violent weather," The disappearance of this fleet gave our people their first lesson in the adroitness of the Japanese in using the Pacific weather to veil their operations. For two days no one could tell which way the ships were moving. Then on December 6 the weather lifted over the Gulf of Siam and the fleet was discovered on a heading that would inevitably bring it to Thailand or the Malay States. During those two anxious days, Admiral Phillips of the British Navy had been in Manila conferring with Admiral Hart. One of his prime objectives had been to get destroyers to screen his two great battleships, Repulse and Prince of Wales, for the British then had only six in Far East waters, all of which were needed for detached service. But on
• Among Air Force personnel a story has persisted that a few days before December 8 Maj. David R. Gibbs flew low across the southern end of Formosa in spotty weather and saw installations stacked with trucks, planes, tanks, and guns. Maj. Gibbs was lost on a flight from Clark Field to Del Monte shortly after hostilities began, so direct verification is impossible; but it seems improbable that Gibbs, then Squadron Commander of the 30th, would have exceeded very positive orders to that extent. Maj. Gen. Eubank, however, says that some fliers were supposed to have exceeded the letter of their orders, and in his opinion some undoubtedly did.

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learning of the Japanese fleet's heading he took off at once by night for Singapore. Destroyers or no destroyers, he felt that he should be at sea." In the meantime our reconnaissance planes began to meet Japanese planes patrolling the sea northwest of Luzon. No incidents occurred, but, as the planes approached, each had its guns manned. Reporting on his PBYs, Captain Wagner said that they and the Japanese were "keeping a wary eye on each other and avoiding each other like stiff-legged dogs." 1 The Japanese planes sighted by the PBYs were not the first, however, to come down the Luzon coast. On November 27, two pursuit pilotsMajor William H. Maverick, attached to Headquarters of the 24th Pursuit Group, and Lieutenant Walter B. Putnam, commanding officer of the Headquarters Squadron-took their planes out to buzz the S.S. Coolidge, on which a friend was sailing for the States and which, with the USAT Scott and an escorting destroyer, had pulled away from Manila at noon.] The two fliers went well out and then, after they had brushed off the Coolidge satisfactorily, they came loafing back along the coast with most of the kinks flown out of their systems. In this relaxed mood, Putnam happened to look up. Straight above were nine planes, flying three three-ship leads, and heading up the coast as he was. He peeled back and tried to get up to them, but they were 10,000 feet higher and he could not come near them. He sent in a report to which the only reaction seemed to be that he must have been mistaken. But Putnam knew he had seen nine ships, and they were none of ours. Putnam had a second experience, this time with one plane, that early raised his suspicions. Just after the beginning of December he was out on a routine night-survey mission led by Major Grover when a single plane with running lights flew hell for leather through their formation.
• Since there was no military alliance with Britain at the time, it was a difficult decision for Admiral Hart to make, but by coincidence four of our destroyers were refueling at Balikpapan (Borneo). Hart decided that there was nothing in international law that would prevent U. S. ships from making an indoctrinational cruise with ships of a friendly power. Before Phillips left he ordered the destroyers to Batavia for supplies and recreation. They should have reached Singapore in 48 hours. Unfortunately the Dutch port authorities refused to open the antisubmarine booms at Balikpapan before sunrise, and by the time the destroyers reached Singapore, the two battleships, unescorted, had long since left on their mission up the Malay coast." t Putnam was uncertain of the date and recollected it as being about three weeks before the war; but the Coolidge sailed on November 27.

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For a second, P-40 planes were spilling all over the Luzon sky and it took them over an hour to get into formation again," The lone plane kept right on going and they were never able to identify it. Then, beginning with December 2, a single plane flew over Clark Field on four consecutive nights. It came about 5:30 in the morning, but no origin for its flight could be found at any Luzon airfield. After its second appearance, orders were given to force the plane to land and, if the pilot committed any overt act, to shoot him down," A six-ship flight from the 17th Pursuit Squadron, led by Lieutenant Boyd D. Wagner, was therefore ordered to attempt interception on the night of December 4-5;" but their search mission was unsuccessful, largely due to the lack of air-ground communication. The radios in their P-40S were ineffective beyond a maximum range of 20 miles. The zoth Pursuit Squadron also made an unsuccessful attempt to intercept on the night of December 5-6. Then, on the night of December 6-7, all aircraft were grounded except the 3rd Pursuit Squadron; and the antiaircraft at Clark Field were alerted to shoot the plane down." That night, however, the plane did not come. That same night was also a quiet one at Iba, though the 3rd Pursuit Squadron were prepared to make a squadron interception. This was with the direct sanction of General Headquarters. When the newly installed radar had first picked up the tracks of unidentified planes off the Zambales coast on December 3 and Clark Field reported its lone plane for the second successive night, Colonel George, now Chief of Staff of the 5th Interceptor Command as well as A-4 on FEAF, had gone to higher headquarters immediately to report not only the presence of the planes but his belief that the two flights were co-operating with each other and were the immediate preliminary to Japanese attack. Yet he had great difficulty in persuading some higher officers that these tracks represented hostile aircraft and not merely some unidentified private or commercial planes-if indeed he persuaded them at all, for many of them were still talking and thinking in terms of war in 1942 and counting the equipment and supplies they were due to receive before the first of March." But both MacArthur and Sutherland, his Chief
• The other members of this flight were Lts. w. J. Feallock, William A. Sheppard, John L. Brownwell, R. B. Church, and znd Lt. William J. Hennon.t?

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of Staff, agreed with George and ordered the interception that was attempted by the 17th Squadron. At this time the decision was reached in General Headquarters to send all the B-17s to Mindanao to get them out of range of direct attack by Japanese land-based planes. If war came, the B-I7s could themselves stage out of Clark Field, picking up their bombs and gasoline for the run to Formosa." But at FEAF Headquarters the latest information was that the 7th Bombardment Group could be expected at any time with four full squadrons. Their plans called for basing the 7th at Del Monte as soon as it arrived, and, since the field there could accommodate at most six squadrons, only two of the 19th Group's squadrons were dispatched. All planes were to have cleared the field by midnight of the 5th. They began taking off singly at 10:00 o'clock, the airborne ships circling the field until the others joined them. But several of the planes were delayed on take-off and it was nearly three hours before they completed their formation and headed south, and the night sky above Clark Field was finally drained of the roar of circling engines. At Iba, the men in the half-buried hut that housed the radar saw more tracks born on the screen. Outside on the blacked-out field the 3rd Squadron's new P-40S stood on the line. Beyond was the dark sea, above which only the radar's eye could trace incoming planes. They did not come in all the way; they stayed offshore in the farther darkness, beyond the sound of the sea, as though there were a point in time for them to meet before they turned back. Then at the end of the runway one of the P-4oS came suddenly to life and the air strip lights bloomed faintly along the field as the plane took off. The pilot was the 3rd's commanding officer,Lieutenant Henry G. Thorne, and he took off alone. He made a long search for the strange planes, far out to sea, but he could not find them," The men were eager to try a Squadron interception and after Thorne's report had been turned in, they were told they could attempt it. All air• According to General Brereton the order was given on the 4th, but he maintains that the order originated with him and that "approval ... was obtained .•. only with the understanding that they [the B-1 7S would be returned to airfields to be constructed 1 on Cebu and Luzon as soon as the necessary facilities could be prepared." (BRERETON, 35.) This matter of dispersing the B-17s will be discussed in Chapter 12.

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craft on Luzon except their own were to remain grounded; 14 therefore any planes encountered would automatically be considered hostile. It was .re-emphasized that they must act defensively; but if the Japanese came in close enough, the 3rd could go for them." In their weeks at Iba, the Squadron had been drawn much more closely into a unit. There was a great deal more work to be done than the 120 enlisted men could handle, and during the last days officers worked beside the men as crew chiefs or digging foxholes and slit trenches. They felt the nearness of war and were doing everything they could to prepare for it, but they were still slow-timing the engines of some of the last planes to reach them and getting in what gunnery training they could. Because of the shortage of .5o-caliber ammunition, they still had to use P-35s which had .30-caliber guns mounted on the fuselage. Consequently there were almost no pursuit pilots who had fired the wing guns that P-40S were equipped with, and the 3rd Squadron offered no exceptions. The men and officers shared the same quarters, a single barracks building without partitions and a group of tents behind it. And as they went about their work together on the air strip beside the bare beach and the blue and empty sea, with their few small buildings in the open and the high and frowning mountains that stood between them and all the rest of Luzon, they had a deepening sense of their own isolation. The day of December 6 must have worn slowly for them, but the night hours brought nothing. The men in the black-out radar hut discovered no tracks on the screen. It was a peaceful night at Iba, as it was everywhere in the Philippines, for as far as is known there was no plane that night in all the Luzon sky.

9. Dcccmber r: Final Inventory

to the Philippines on December 7, as it did to Pearl Harbor. The arbitrary date line, by means of which man seeks to count his days, requires that the sun that rises in Hawaii on December 7 rise over the Philippines on December 8. Actually the man in Manila
WAR DID NOT COME

DECEMBER

7:

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INVENTORY

has seen the same sunrise as his brother in Honolulu, though it has taken five and a half hours of the earth's slow turning to bring the sun above the Sierra Madres. So, ironically, it was only through a man-made contrivance that in the Philippines Sunday, December 7, remained a day of grace. Outing families could still rattle along Manila streets, six or eight or ten people crammed into one high-wheeled calesa drawn by a single pony-sized horse, and in the open country small groups in their Sunday best drifted as they always had along the dusty roads to the old, sweet-belled churches. But the armed forces continued their preparations for war. The Infantry was still mobilizing. Its strength in men amounted to perhaps 112,000,and was made up as follows: U. S. Army Ground Forces (including 12,000Philippine Scouts), 22,400;Philippine Army (one regular and ten reserve divisions), 87,000; two Philippine Constabulary Regiments of reduced strength, 3000/ But their effectiveness by no means measured up to their listed strength, and General Wainwright's description of his North Luzon Force at this date gives a much truer picture. Out of 28,000men making up his command, 25,000were untrained and led to a very large extent by inexperienced officers. The 31st Division, forming on the Zambales coast, was a case in point; it had had no combat practice, no combat training, little or no rifle and machine gun practice. It began mobilizing on September I, but two of its infantry regiments were called up on November I and November 25 respectively. The majority of its artillery was not mobilized till after war started. For that matter, not one of the four other divisions in or attached to Wainwright's command had a full complement of artillery, and the guns they did have were ancient British 75s or 2'95-inch mountain howitzers for which, because they too were obsolete, no ammunition was being manufactured. They were short of all other types of ammunition and grenades. They had no antitank outfits, almost no transportation-"hardly a truck, hardly a car"-and their only means of communication was the public telephone system which the Japanese agents could tap or cut almost at will. Two of the five divisions were each lacking a n:giment. The 26th Cavalry and Battery A of the 23rd Field Artillery were the only thoroughly trained troops in Wainwright's command, yet this green

66

THEY

FOUGHT

WITH

WHAT

THEY

HAD

army was called on to cover an area of roughly 75 miles north and south by 100 east and west." The South Luzon Force under Brigadier General Albert M. Jones was in no better case-its main numerical strength then consisting of the 41st and 51st Philippine Army Divisions, which were mobilizing below Manila in the provinces of Cavite and Batangas. The 45th and 57th Infantry regiments of the Philippine Scouts, and the 31st Infantry, an allAmerican outfit, were being held in reserve. Besides these there were the four small regiments of harbor defense troops on Corregidor and its three satellite forts, Hughes, Drum, and Frank. A good deal of commercial shipping had run into Manila Bay during the past few days, but on December 7 most of our Asiatic Fleet was widely dispersed. Admiral Hart had long realized that with one heavy and two light cruisers and 13 overage destroyers he had no chance at all of standing up to one of the great navies of the world. The heavy cruiser Houston was therefore ordered to Iloilo on the south coast of Panay. The light cruiser Boise which had brought in an Army convoy on December 4 was sent down immediately to Cebu. The light cruiser Marblehead with four destroyers was loitering off Tarakan, Borneo. Four more destroyers with the tender Black Hawk were presumably en route to Batavia and Singapore. This left three destroyers to patrol the Manila-Subic Bay area, and two which were in dry dock at Cavite as the result of a collision two months before, the Peary and the Pillsbury. All the 29 submarines of the fleet were also in the area as were the six motor torpedo boats of Lieutenant John D. Bulkeley's P- T Squadron Three, which had yet to prove their extraordinary ability and daring," Finally, the Asiatic Fleet had Patrol Wing Ten, the disposal of whose PBY s has already been described. But these slow and lumbering planes, in spite of the extraordinary courage and pugnacity of their crews, were not adapted to offensive combat. The weaknesses in the other services laid an added burden on the Air Force which it was ill equipped to carry. This fact apparently was realized in relatively few quarters. General Brereton was one of those

DECEMBER

7:

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who did recognize it, and Colonel George in his talks to the personnel of the 24th Pursuit Group tried to prepare the men for the odds they would presently face. He had explained to them that they were not expected to defeat the enemy in the air, but to fight a holding action until reinforcements could reach the Islands. Until then, the 24th Pursuit Group would be virtually a suicide outfit. On December 6, George brought the majority of the pursuit pilots together in the theater at Nichols Field and told them that the war was a matter of days, and possibly only hours, away. It was a grim talk, but there was no trace of defeatism in his attitude. He pointed out that they had about 70 firstline planes to throw against the huge [ap air fleet, but he believed they would turn in a good performance.' He did not convince all of the younger pilots, but he made a deep impression that morning on a few of the older hands, and when Lieutenant Grashio offered to bet Dyess five pesos there would be no war with Japan, Dyess snapped it up and laid another bet that war would be declared before a week was up. It was midmorning when the men came out of the theater. In spite of the heat, Nichols Field and the Air Depot were swarming with activity. Dyess's zrst Squadron was receiving and readying its new P-40s. When the planes were received they still had to have their guns installed and bore-sighted, '* but in this last operation the men were handicapped by the acute shortage of .50-caliber ammunition, of which only a few rounds were available for test purposes," That was Saturday. Work did not stop with darkness, for the Air Corps was now working the clock around in its effort to be ready. Sunday made no difference, either, at Nichols Field, and men were still at work that evening when the sun went down. At that time the squadrons of the 24th Pursuit Group turned in a status report showing 90 planes in commission; but to understand their actual strength and consequently have some insight into the showing they made on December 8, it is necessary, even at the risk of being repetitious, to list the strength and location of the various Air Force units on the evening of December 7.
• "In bore-sighting the guns are fired and adjusted until they strike the spot where the sights are centered." 6

68

THEY FOUGHT

WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

Altogether there were 8100 U. S. Air Corps troops in the Philippines, besides some 1500 belonging to the Philippine Army Air Corps. The latter, stationed on Luzon at Cabanatuan, at Zablan Field, Manila, and at an auxiliary field in Batangas, also had a detachment at Lahug Field on the island of Cebu; but their equipment was pathetically antiquated. Of their 60 planes 42 were PT-13s, Primary Trainers. Their only combat aircraft were twelve of the P-26s discarded by our forces and three B-Ios. The Filipino pilots heroically took these crates into combat, but their effective contribution was necessarily a small one. Five hundred of the U. S. Air Corps troops were stationed outside of Luzon, principally at Del Monte on Mindanao. Here, on December 7, were the 16 B-17s of the 14th and 93rd Squadrons under Major O'Donnell and Captain Cecil E. Combs. In the course of the morning several officers of the Air Base Group took off in one of the two B-18s that had been assigned to them and made a reconnaissance of the entire island, flying low over Davao to have a close look at the airfield; but everything was serene.' With two full squadrons at Del Monte, a total of 19 B-17s remained at Clark Field-eight each in the 30th and 28th Squadrons and three in the Headquarters Squadron." Only 16 of these planes, however, were ready for immediate combat service on the night of December 7. Two were in the hangars getting a camouflage paint job, and the third was the plane that had lost its tail section while landing in a typhoon and was still out of commission. Clark Field by now had acquired something of the aspect of an armed camp. Tent areas had been added on the far side of the road leading up to Fort Stotsenburg. There were first-aid stations round the field and the whole place was honeycombed with foxholes and slit trenches, most of them dug by a mechanical ditch digger. It was operated day and night by a relay of Filipinos and was now at work behind the Bachelor Officers' Quarters. Round the perimeter of the landing area, in their sandbag nests, were the antiaircraft guns of the 200th Coast Artillery (AA), a mobile unit consisting of one battalion of three-inch and one of 37-mm guns; and big revetments were being built for the
• Commanded respectively by Maj. David R. Gibbs, Maj. William William E. McDonald. P. Fisher, and Capt.

LOCATION OF U.S. sqUADRONS ON LUZON

DECEMBER. 7

Viqan

Tuqueqarao •

• Baguio

.. Rosales

17th & 21 st

Pursuit Squadrons
Q~ ~

NOTE-

14th Ie 93rd Bomb. Squadrons at DeJMonte, Mindanao

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THEY FOUGHT WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

B-17s, big enough, one pilot said, to have housed a battleship. Two of them had been finished, but even in them the big planes were open to strafing attack. The air crews of the 19th Group, however, were less inclined to think of a raid against their own field than of the attack mission that had been planned for them against Formosa. It had been set up in some detail, and the reconnaissance missions had also served as dry-runs from which gas and bomb loads had been worked out. Sunday at Clark Field, as elsewhere in the Philippines, was without incident. The planes returning from their reconnaissance towards Formosa had nothing to report except that the bad weather of the past two days continued to cover the northern Islands. The big bombers in their search for shipping were flying close over the water, hunting in the open lanes between the squalls. There was nothing to see; nor had there been on Saturday when Major Walsh in one of the Headquarters planes had gone up to within 15 miles of Formosa. Six weeks later they would have learned to be automatically suspicious of such a spell of weather, but on December 7 they merely had nothing to report. The status report turned in by the 24th Pursuit Group gave the following location and combat strength of its squadrons:
I. 3rd Pursuit Squadron, Iba, commanded by Lt. H. G. Thorne, 18 P-4oEs in tactical commission. 2. 17th Pursuit Squadron, Nichols Field, commanded by Lt. Boyd D. Wagner, 18 P-4oEs in tactical commission. 3. z.rst Pursuit Squadron, Nichols Field, commanded by Lt. W. E. Dyess, 18 P-4oEs in tactical commission. 4. zoth Pursuit Squadron, Clark Field, commanded by Lt. J. H. Moore, IS P-4oBs in tactical commission. 5. 34th Pursuit Squadron, Del Carmen, commanded by Lt. S. H. Marrett, 18 P-35s in tactical commission,"

It added up to 54 P-40Es, 18 P-4oBs, and 18 P-35s, an official total of 90 first-line combat-worthy planes." In actual fact, the Group's strength did not approach that figure. The P-35s had been used by all the different squadrons as work-horse planes
• It should be noted that the 3rd Squadron decided to use only I 8 tactically. 9 had
22

planes

in commission,

but had

DECEMBER

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71

before being turned over to the 34th; they were lightly armored and armed; their .3o-caliberguns were worn out from steady use in gunnery training; and all of them needed an engine change, a condition that was seriously aggravated by the heavy dust on the Del Carmen field. The zrst Squadron at Nichols Field had received the last four planes to make up its total of 18 that same day," the 18th being delivered after dark." None of these last planes had been in the air before they were taken up into combat; and the squadron had not been able to finish slow-timing any of the other planes. In fact none of the 18 planes on the line had had more than three hours in the air." There were therefore but three pursuit squadrons in the Philippines on December 7 with first-line planes actually fit for combat. This force of 54 pursuit planes, coupled with the 34 B-17s in commission, made a total of 88 first-line aircraft in which our men were asked to face the Japanese Air Force. Not even at the start of the Revolution had American troops stood to heavier odds. They fought the brand-new P-40S of the zrst Squadron and the worn-out P-35s down to the last ship, but their performance was not first line. They were only better planes than the B-1os and P-26s the Filipinos went to war with. The pilots, moreover, still had to learn the limitations of the P-4os; and they had to learn them under actual battle conditions against odds that almost never were less than ten to one and usually were nearer twenty. Nor was their B-17 the Flying Fortress that ended the war over Germany with its power turrets, heavier armor, and tail guns. These B-17Cs and Ds could only protect themselves adequately in full squadron formation in level flight, but the way the men had to fight them during the first days-one, two, or three ships over the target-they might as well, as General O'Donnell says, have been flying spotted ponies. The pursuit pilots still lacked oxygen; their ship to ground communications were inadequate; their air warning service was next to useless; and they were based on four fields all of which were known to the enemy through espionage and air reconnaissance. On these fields there were, of course, the other planes that added up the paper totals which made our air strength in the Philippines sound fairly impressive. There were the 0-46s and 0-52S of the znd Observation Squadron. There were 12 B-18s, two of them at Del Monte, which were used to run sup-

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THEY FOUGHT WITH

WHAT THEY HAD

plies and parts down to Mindanao with as great hazard to their crews from the weather as from the Japanese; there were eight A-27s, the dive bombers with their instrumentation in Siamese, only two of which could still fly; and there was a miscellaneous assortment of trainers, observation planes, and broken-down bombers scattered here and there on different fields. And finally, of course, there was the 27th Bombardment Group-I200 officers and men whose planes had never come. On the evening of December 7, the officers gave a dinner for General Brereton at the Manila Hotel. It was quite an occasion and it is probable that none of the participating 27th noticed the General slipping out on them, first for a conference with Admiral Purnell and a little later with General Sutherland. From them he learned that in the opinion of the War and Navy Departments war might break at any time. Brereton called his staff together and had Colonel Brady warn all airfields to go on combat alert. At the same time plans for field exercises, which were to have brought the B-I7s back temporarily from Mindanao to Clark Field, had to be canceled." Meanwhile, the 27th's party at the Manila Hotel continued on its course, breaking up finally at two o'clock on the morning of December S.u It was a clear night then, with a soft southerly wind beginning to blow. Manila was quiet as the men found their way back to Fort MeKinley through the blackout. Only the sound of their jeeps or, after they had gone, the quick clopping feet of a little Filipino horse taking home a calesa full of Sunday stragglers could be heard in the streets. Less than an hour later the men watching the radar screen in the halfburied hut at Iba saw the tracks of the first big flight of Japanese bombers coming down from Formosa through the still darkness over the China Sea.• Sheppard puts the time at about 2:00 A.M.; but the 24th Group Narrative puts the time at about 4:00 A.M.ID znd Lt. A. E. Krieger, the Assistant Operations Officer at Iba, says "the early dark hours" and adds that one of the pilots of the 3rd Squadron figured out that the Japanese flight came down within an hour of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Thorne, the Squadron CO, puts it at about 1:00 A.M.16 I believe the time was between 2:00 and 3:00 A.M. At 2:30 A.M. the 21st Squadron at Nichols Field was ordered to stations,17 which lends weight to Sheppard's statement, and it seems likely that the flight reported off Iba was the cause of the alert at Nichols. See Chapter II, below.

III Attack: December 8

10.

Iba: The First Phase

THEREWAS NO QUESTION of the flight's identity. They had to be the Japanese, for all planes on Luzon, except the 3rd'S, were grounded again that night. The men thought this was war at last, both the men in the cockpits of the planes, and the others standing by to see them off. No time was wasted, no words were needed. The interception had been carefully planned and every pilot knew his place in the formation they were to fly. The engines thundered as they were run up; then came a moment of comparative quiet before Thorne's plane moved out from the rest, roared briefly down the strip, and, almost in the instant of becoming airborne, turned away over the sea. One by one the others followed, the wash of their propellers driving clouds of dust back through the darkness. Then they were gone. The beat of their engines grew fainter than the soft wash of the sea along the beach. Only the men inside the sunken hut, their eyes intent upon the radar screen, could follow them. The pilots knew their heading but they did not know at what altitude the Japanese were flying, for the radar set at Iba had no means of estimating altitude. So they themselves were at staggered altitudes to afford the greatest possible chance of interception. Their orders of the night before still held: if they found the Japanese within 20 miles of shore, they were to shoot on sight. But they saw nothing at all, though they searched far beyond their zo-mile limit in wide casts across the sea. It was only when they returned to the field that they learned that interception of a sort had been accomplished.